I am not sure about eCPM role for avoiding smart pricing. But what eCPM do you consider as safe to avoid Smart Pricing?
Effective CPM - Cost per 1000 impressions. From a publisher's perspective, CPM is a useful way to compare revenue across different channels and advertising programs. It is calculated by dividing total earnings by the number of impressions in thousands. For example, if a publisher earned $180 from 45,000 impressions, the CPM would equal $180/45, or $4.00.
eCPM is the amount that you earn on average per thousand views of your web site. I'm not sure that I'd worry about it that much for smart pricing purposes - as long as you're getting real traffic and real conversions, it's not going to hurt you. eCPM is also based on so many factors that it would be hard to game it (price per click, # of clicks, # of views, etc.)
I track each of my pages by channels, and I have noticed there can be a huge difference in eCPMs between the pages. But it's hard enough trying to do the math on this stuff; I think I'll just stick to figuring out how much I'm getting per click on different keywords, and adjusting pages until I get them higher. Thank you for the information!
The criteria for smart pricing seem to rely mostly with the adword advertiser. So the best way to avoid smart pricing is to match interested visitors with relevant ads, as much as possible. Your click-through rate does not have any impact on smart-pricing.