Maybe someone can shed some light on this one: I have a small network of entertainment/viral sites and use Adsense with them. Over the last 10-15 days, the revenue has dropped by at about 50%. I've been looking at the reports and it appears that the traffic and CTR has held steady, but the eCPM seems to be dropping like crazy. I have been reading about smart pricing and I wonder if I am a victim. Or, it could just be a bad month. I also added 3 new sites to my network and I wonder if that's somehow a factor. I tried moving half the sites over to YPN to see how things would go, but the targetting is SO poor on YPN that it just doesn't work well. My topics aren't mainstream enough to run YPN ads without geting lots of credit card and mortgage ads, and the users are mainly young people. Anyways, I am hoping that some of you more experienced Adsense users would be able to advise: - How can I assess what is going on with the revenue? - Should I wait it out? I have never seen a fluctuation of this magnitude/length and my sites cover various categories, so it's hard to imagine that ALL the advertisers in all the topics are suddenly spending less. - Is there any way to tell if I'm being smart priced? Ok, thanks!
It appears you have, indeed, been smart-priced. No need to give it too much thought; it is what it is, and you simply have no control over it other than to remove Adsense from your low-performing sites and hope the eCPM increases once more. But I suspect that the site that makes you the most money (your entertainment site) is also the site that has gotten you smart priced, so removing ads from that site wouldn't make very much sense. It happens to everyone.
Is it possible that the addition of the 3 new sites (one of which does more traffic than all the others combined) somehow caused the whole account to be smartpriced? I added the 3 new sites, and within one day my revenues fell. Possible? So, what is the ordinary course of action here? Should I start looking for alternatives to Adsense? If so, any suggestions? Also, if I remove the new sites and put my account exactly back to where it was, how long should I wait before I determine if the account has been un-smartpriced?? thanks!
It won't happen that quickly. One day isn't enough time for the smart price to kick in. That's why you have all this time -- weeks, sometimes months -- where you earn a ton of money, which makes the sudden drop in eCPM even more noticable. As I mentioned, your entertainment site, which makes you the most money, is most likely to blame. Just continue doing as you are, and allow everything to handle itself. This is simply out of your hands unless you want to start tinkering, which I don't personally suggest.
Ok, I've removed the original entertainment site (which, agreed, was probably producing crappy traffic for Google) and put it on YPN. Now I have the new sites which are producing lots of clicks, but at crappy rates. I'll give it 10 days and see if I can get myself un smart-priced! Wish me luck
Have been using AdSense since mid januari 2006. At first we made hig x.xx, droped after 2 months to mid x.xx ... now, the last couple of weeks it has been low xx.xx everyday ... one site, 30k pageviews, 2 - 3k uniques per day returning visitors (200 uniques per day from searchengines) .... low ctr 0.xx .... (<--- is it against the TOS?) Never noticed the "smart pricing" .... it's increasing every week, slowly, but steady ... cya, /PatrikB
This month has been terrible for me as well. I went from averaging $10 a day last month to $4 or $5. In the last week it has gotten even worse I'm down to $1-2 a day. This really sucks. My traffic and page impressions is actually up but my clicks and click amounts are way down. I'm starting to think I'm getting a lot PSA on my sites. Any additional advice?