I did a test over the last few days and so far my ROI is more than double whgat it was for sdsense in the same spot on my pages. I don't think Adsense is dead, but I was displaying it the same as I used to when it was paying me much better. The adsense payout turned to shit so slowly that I never thought about trying something else. Thanks Scott Boulch for making me think about things that I had grown lax about. Has this happened to anyone else yet? JJ
Remember that when you make a change on a site all visitors notice it. This maybe why your revenue is up. Although it is a justified change. I think the payments are dropping for adsesnse clicks.
I just think more and more experienced adwords users turn off serving ads at the content network because the low CTR fucks up the quality score of their keywords resulting in higher prices paid for search network clicks.
That's an excellent point PhilG. Only time will tell. If I remember, I'll post again in a month to let you know if it only lasted a week or if it "had legs" as they say JJ
For some topics I also make much more money with per action or per sale programs. But for others, AdSense is still king. So this really depends on many things...
Still going strong. Had a huge boost on Wednesday. However, tried this for another site with the opposite effect Win some lose some JJ
Content CTR has no impact on Search Quality Score at all. People turn off the content network because the traffic does not convert enough for the price. The traffic is almost across the board significantly worse then the search traffic. That is why people turn it off. That being said, people are realizing they can now get decently priced traffic just going after the content network, and thus you have the void being filled by a lot of people with sub 5 cent bids for traffic. Thus you end up with people complaining about low payouts.
Thing is that in Adwords you can pay less for content network sites so the revenue is really lower. Affiliate programs are great alternative - in many times if you do little extra work like writing an short review or endorsement can get your results way above than just doubling. Remember, these people who bids on adsense, don't do that just to make break even. So there are much bigger money than 7 cents per click.
Since I started publishing websites, I've never relied on Adsense. In fact, it's no more than a well-placed after thought on my pages. I consider any income from it to be a bonus. That's not to say that sometimes it isn't a really NICE bonus, but a bonus all the same. I won't be depending on Adsense to pay the bills.
I used to have a site were I was making a lot with cpa offers. To have good earnings with cpa depends on the site and if you are able to find a good cpa offer to match your site, which is sometimes hard to do. The advantage of adsense is that they will show you targeted advertising automatically, or at least they try.