the publisher gets screwed when he's paid less than his traffic is worth, because the pond scum is lying about the keywords in their ads. not always, because liars manipulate keywords to get higher ranking in the ad block... don't even try telling us that you haven't seen mfa'ers do that. the best way to understand adsense is to get an adwords account, and learn how to game the system like the mfa'ers do.
good post... now take it to the next level; are those scammers going to tell google that your traffic is converting well? of course not, because then they would have to pay more for clicks on your website. and what happens when adwords advertisers tell google(via goals) that your traffic is worthless? you get "smart priced", which many people believe drives the epc down for your entire account. the only solution is for the publisher to use the competitive ad filter to put the mfa scum in the bit bucket.
You are absolutely right! There's so many of these crap sites out there, and it benefits no one but the people making these sites. And the sad part is, Google hasn't done much to stop this madness.
Exactly. MFA'ers know how to play the system. They know how to manipulate keywords so that they are paying chump-change for good traffic.
If they were lying about the keywords in their ads then they would get a bad quality score and have to pay higher prices for click. I do have an AdWords account which I actively use. Again nothing anyone has said on here has convinced me that arbitragers drive prices down. If arbitragers can somehow magically "manipulate keywords", why couldn't the so called "real advertisers" do that too? Everyone is on a level playing field. Arbitragers are competing for click like everyone else. Remove them from the pool of advertisers and earnings will go down for publishers.
2 problems: 1) Technically, this isn't arbitrage. The term arbitrage refers to a riskless profit opportunity. An example of this would be short selling a stock at $20 while being able to buy the stock for $19 at the same time. So yeah, we're using the wrong term to describe this practice. 2) Obviously the ads with low CPC are only displayed when there are no ads available for the keyword with higher CPC. It wouldn't make sense for Google to display cheaper ads over more expensive ones, since they get paid a % of total ad sales. Higher CPC ads being displayed equals higher revenue for Google. Thanks for playing, but in practice your argument doesn't work.
Simple. Because the "real advertisers" aren't in it to manipulate the system. They are advertising for the purpose of selling a real service or product. Remove arbitragers from the pool, and we'll be in better shape. How much do you really think arbitragers are paying for keywords?? Do you really think arbitragers are contributing that much to Adsense when they are paying 2 or 3 cents per click? Let's get real. It's the "real advertisers" that are keeping Adsense alive. Do you think Google would even bother with Adwords or Adsense if every advertiser was paying less than 5 cents per click?
not necessarily, because so much of it is based on throwaway .info domains, so there is no history to base the bid on: "For calculating a keyword's minimum bid: The keyword's historical clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group The quality of your landing page Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account Other relevance factors" "For calculating a keyword-targeted ad's eligibility to appear on a particular content site, as well as the ad's position on that site: The ad's past performance on this and similar sites The relevance of the ads and keywords in the ad group to the site The quality of your landing page Other relevance factors" http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215 you are telling us that arbitragers don't drive prices down, but you refuse to acknowledge the fact that mfa'ers use fake keywords and throwaway domains... so you don't have a leg to stand on. i do agree with you to the extent that *honest* arbitrage is not nearly as serious, when compared to what the mfa scum are doing.
adwords does NOT use the cpc pricing as the only factor in ranking ads in an ad block... the predicted ctr is also a factor... if google thinks the ad will get clicked on more often, because of the keywords, it will rank that ad over an ad that has a higher cpc. more clicks for less per click can earn more than fewer clicks for more per click. "For the content network, we don't use a keyword's Quality Score to set quality-based minimum cost-per-click (CPC) bids. Instead, we evaluate all keywords within the ad group and match your ad to pages across the content network. However, we do use a keyword's Quality Score to rank your ads and position them on network pages. Your keyword's Quality Score is based on the relevance of the ad and keywords to a content site, your ad's performance history on the site and similar sites, and the quality of your ad's landing page." https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=48863&ctx=sibling that is why the mfa liars can use whatever keyword they want, as soon as the cpc starts going up on their throwaway domain, they get another domain and start over.
I don't refuse to acknowledge the fact that mfa'ers use fake keywords and throwaway domains. In my experience any AdWords campaign that have bad quality scores get slapped down pretty quickly. It's hard to get more than a few clicks this way. I guess there may be some sneaky ways to do this that I don't know about, but I doubt this contributes significantly to the overall AdWords ecosystem. I still think that arbitragers on the whole increase the amount of money that publishers (and Google) make.
Its ridiculous. In my niche "Keyword1" ranks as highly competitive but when my site gets traffic through "Keyword1 Keyword2" type phrases the cpc drops to less than a penny. Most of the sites are just advertising their own Adsense ads & affiliates so what's the solution? I guess find an affiliate of my own and start buying traffic from Google in underpriced keyword phrases...
so why are all these people bitching about mfa'ers? i agree that the pond scum knows things that we don't about gaming the system, but what we do know is that their entire existance is based on arbitrage. many people out here have tried to make money with honest arbitrage, and most have given up on it.
I think Google has tried to remain competitive by lowering click payouts. There are far too many ppc companies that give out targeted visitors for lower bid rates. The rule of Buy Low and Sell High can not be erased in any business. That is what true arbitrage is. People are complaining because the MFA sites look like MFA sites. If Google tightens the standards, then so will the MFA webmasters. So in essence, you can't get rid of them.
I'm seeing a lot of irrelevant low paying ads on celebrity sites. The ads have the celebrity name in the title but have no relevancy.