Hello, I run flash gaming sites : http://www.MuchGames.com http://www.Arcadum.com http://www.BlitzGamer.com I've experience a major drop over the last couple of weeks. I believe it started around April 14th 2006. My sites have dropped over 75% in CPM. The clicks have stayed the same but the CPM has been terrible. I believe I may have the reason and the solution to that. The other day I found out that Microsoft did an ActiveX update on all the newer Internet Explorer browsers. The update took place around April 14th 2006, which was around the time my CPM dropped. You can read more about the update here: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1943847,00.asp It basically effects all the media sites that use the <object> , <applet> or <embed> tags. Now, when you scroll over any flash game for example, a thick border will appear around it and it will say "Click to activate and use this control". Once you manually click it, it activates it and plays it. I think this might effect the CPM, since some visitors may think that the game doesn't actually work and leave the site, where in fact the media just wasn't activated. Solution I have searched and found a way to bypass this update and make the media load automatically. To do so you may either upload this file: http://www.muchgames.com/activateActiveX.js and place the following code at the end of your html document: <script language="JScript" type="text/jscript" src="activateActiveX.js"></script> Code (markup): OR You can upload this file: http://www.muchgames.com/activateActiveX_onload.js and place the following code in between your <head></head> tags: <script language="JScript" type="text/jscript" src="activateActiveX_onload.js"></script> Code (markup): I hope all the media sites out there will benefit from it.
I started another thread regarding huge decrease in earnings in the last few weeks. I dont have any activeX on my sites, so I can't see this being the reason. You also say your click ar the same as before, but earnings dropped, so not sure how the IE/ActiveX poroblem can be related. Please reply if I have missed somthing.
Well, the ads will still be displaying for my site. However the quality of the clicks won't be as good. If most people see the games not being loaded, they might just click my ad thinking that it has something to do with the games not being loaded. So once things stop working properly on a site, quality of the content as well as the clicks will decrease. I'm not 100% sure, but it kind of makes logical sense to me.
I have experienced earnings drop and I don't have ActiveX on my pages. I also don't use IE to browse, only FF. So back to the drawing board for you dude.