I have a lot of faith in Digitalpoint, particulary the Adsense forums, so this is why I want to ask this question. Mystery: Drop in eCPM by 30-40% Stats for December '09: Avg. Page Impressions: 7,699 Avg. Page CTR: 1.46% Avg. Page eCPM: $8.72 Stats for Jan '10 (so far): Avg. Page Impressions: 7,921 Jan Page CTR: 1.49% Jan Page eCPM: $6.76 Now before you say "hey you moron $8.72 to $6.76 isn't a 40% decrease" you must understand one thing: in December, my eCPM for good days was in the double digits ($12-$16 usually), and on weekends it was obviously very low ($4-6). So this evened out. In January, my eCPM is in the single digits day-by-day. So I have no good days, just long bad weeks. Bear in mind also, my January stats are not done because January is not over, so if this continues the Avg. for the month will be much lower. Result My earnings are 30-40% lower on a weekly basis compared to Dec. Now I have a Blog and I looked at particular blog posts in December that yielded high eCPM and re-posted them with hope. They had higher eCPM than other content in January but still not what they once were. In December a blog post that had maybe a $16 eCPM in January had $9. And it seems to be getting worse day-by-day. So my CTR is nearly the same, traffic nearly the same, my content has not really changed. Source of traffic is relatively the same as well. I have tried: - finding out low eCPM/MFA sites and putting them in my Competitive Ad filter (there are barely any) - clearing the competitive ad filter out completely (read somewhere if you keep blocking ads, avg. bid for your ad space goes down) - changing title of blog posts to get better targeted ads - google section targeting code The 3 common points of advice for ecpm are: 1. CTR (where you place your ads) --> mine is fine, hasn't really changed 2. Content --> my content has stayed the same 3. Traffic --> the same, in fact might be a little higher than last month The only answer is Google Smart Priced me Many articles say being smart-priced isn't bad for you, but good. Many sites say the opposite. The solution all sites give: adsblacklist.com. That's great but the site hasn't accepted new users for months. So what do I do? Am I really just smart priced by Google or is there something I haven't analyzed yet? I appreciate everyone's input on this, thanks so much. - Jared
very good stats tracking and analysis. maybe another reason for your dropping is advertiser pay less for adwords than before. maybe you should track the stat for longer periods (3-6 months) and compare them all.
This could be down to what advertisers are willing to pay per click at the moment. Traditionally advertisers pay more for advertising leading up to Christmas and maybe for the first week in January. The next peak normally arrives at the beginning of April. Your click through rate is low though. The usual cause of this is ad placement but you reckon your's is fine. Are your ads blended? Have a look at google adsense success stories and COPY their layout. Look at askthebuilder.com for example. Also add (if you haven't already and it doesn't overload your site and make it look ad tacky) add chitika. It could be that your sites are falling down in SE organic searches. This could happen if you don't change or add content. If you want to keep it the same at least write and publish articles (including links to pages starting with highest earners) and drive relevant and interested traffic to your site.
I think you have a good point. Are you able to compare your earnings farther back? Maybe you might see data that shows this happens every year around Nov-Jan.
I thought a normal CTR was usually 1-2%? I've had days where it was over 2 or 3, and days where it was just barely 1, but I didn't give it any thought. --> My ads are blended very well --> I have 3 ad blocks, 1 large square above the fold, 1 skyscraper on the left, one small square on the right I'd use chitika but the 3 ad units I already have are pretty visible, don't wanna seem spammy. Your point about my site falling down in SEO is very interesting. In January, 8 out of 18 of my blog posts have been re-posts of December. This is because I saw in December these blog posts had high eCPM so I thought I'd try again and see the results, and of course their eCPM wasn't as high anymore. I wasn't aware that advertisers cared about this! I actually have been doing this since basically November '09 so I can't go any farther back, lol. In terms of months using adsense, sure I'm new to this, but I've spent dozens of hours reading adsense articles. I'd say 75% of them say the same things, but I've learned so much so far. Also, I've really spent a lot of time analyzing stuff with Adsense Reports and linking it to Google Analytics. It's funny how so far no one has agreed that I've been Smart Priced! How interesting.
The very same thing happened to me. My earnings are 50% lower than it was last year and I've been trying my hand at chitika lately. Not much I can do except for waiting it out. But IMO google should really warn publishers at least one month in advance before they decide to smart price them. It may be just numbers and statistics to them, but a lot of us make a living from adsense and can't afford a 50%-1000% drop in our income out of the blue. It RUINS LIVES.
QFT With several years of data, I see this happen each year (except January 2009 when the economy tanking a few months earlier changed the game a little)
Well, I see where's he coming from, you just have to filter a lot of crap out to get to the nuggets lol
Adsense earnings fluctuate daily so dun think too much into it. Just make sure u update ur site with good HPK posts.