Since smart pricing is recalculated each week...would it be possible to 'avoid' or revert Smart Pricing's effects by showing another ad networks' advertisers for one week?
Is this known for a fact that smart pricing is recalculated each week? I couldn't find it in the other thread you mentioned.
I read it somewhere too that smart pricing is calculate each week. But the problem is how you going to know you're been smart priced?
One way to tell is by monitoring your Adsense throughout the day. When Adsense screen updates and you notice one of your channels shows that a page has only 1 click, but the revenue for that click is 1 to 2 cents, then this could be a strong indication your site has been smartpriced. I mean, if the minimum bid in Adwords is 5 cents and Google is paying you 60% to 70% for the click, you should at a bare minimum get at least 3 cents for a click. This is all speculation, but it makes sense to me.
Just say you see that, how would you know which site is being smart priced? Since it affects the entire account, you wouldn't want to remove ads from the site that is converting well...
Can we all just stop talking about smart pricing and thinking of ways to avoid or detect it? It doesn't matter how or what it effects. It's just there. Live with it. Pete
I must agree with this... trying to avoid smart pricing is such a waste of time... just go work on your sites and forget about this, there is really nothing you can do about it Here is an interesting article about it http://www.jensense.com/archives/2005/10/one_poorly_conv.html
Jen does say it's calculated every week, which is good for me. I got smart priced a few days ago. Guess I shouldn't have activated so many pages all at once ...
Don't know exactly what you mean by this but looking at the partial quote of jensense i doubt that is the cause for your site or account being smart priced.
I would have no problem if they smart priced certain ads or sites or niches even, but an entire account seems far fetched to me. One way to combat smart pricing would be to create different sites in different niches, so if one site or niche converts poorly, you have other sites to even it out - sort of like diversifying. But according to people who say an entire account is smart priced, this has the exact opposite effect and you would be better off with just one site/niche which makes no sense to me at all.
True, but it's a bit dissapointing when you set up a new site with good information, and the clicks are worth nothing because you have another site with low CTR and conversion I suppose. I guess the answer is not to use Adsense on poorly converted pages, which is what I have done.
I guess, but what if it was like something like switching between Adsense and Yahoo on a week to week basis?
Although it may make sense in terms of not keeping all eggs in one basket, I don't think it's a smart strategy. The actual duration of the period that is taken into consideration is not known. It can very well be any arbitrary length of time. Alternatively, it can be any time it takes to generate enough stats about your account, and it may depend on how busy it is and how many clicks you generate. I side with other people suggested here that there are better ways to spend your time than chasing the elusive ghosts of smart pricing.
True, I agree also that you know...building content, driving traffic etc is going to work better. But some sites just don't work weel with advertisements. Like forums for example. At least the type of forum I run...adsense, etc, works horribly on it. It wouldn't be too hard to set up a rotation, you could do it easily in PHPAdsNew
I can't see how you come to the conclusion that a 1 or 2 c click would mean you've been smart priced. I have a site that almost always generates some 1 or 2 c clicks. Another site is generating a 50c average. Now if that account is being smart priced then I'd love to see what the 50c average should be.
is it possible to know what individual ads are performing poorly in this way - i would think you can control smart pricing by removing poor performing ads i assume channels are no good as they only cover the page and not the actual ads does Google analytics help in any way?
You could set up a ton of channels and try to monitor it, make changes until you think you've eliminated smart pricing...but you'll go insane Your time is spent better elsewhere.