I think I may have been G slapped. I was/am doing arbitrage, w/ made for adsens sites. displaying adsens ads, while buying cpc ads elsewhere. my ecpm has been nearly cut in half today, when i checked my stats. is G reducing my epc? I'm now barely breaking even, if not losing money. Maybe it was my CTR? should i have kept it under a safe radar, whatever a safe % may be? help, thx
Smartpricing activates when you are delivering piss-poor traffic. You should be happy you didn't get banned. Consider this a warning.
Actually, my ecpm, is back to normal. for a period of 3-4 hours, my ecpm was 1/5 of what it normally was so I guess i didn't get G slapped.
There are ways around this so called "smart pricing" and arbitrage..but you have to tinker around. good luck
here's a video of making a good case for arbitrage, that it's ok/legal: youtube.com/watch?v=rHFczv9oA2w It basically says that you can't stop the fundamentals of economics - and that all the search companies, including G, are doing some form of arb. themselves.
They do not consider it a good business model, though...at least, that was the wording of the email that went out to MANY publishers almost two years ago when a boatload of them got banned from the program for the practice. If you do it, realize that the precedent has already been set for banning you.