Learned early on not to put too many ad units on sites. Was told I'd get "Smart Priced" even though I didn't know what it was. I did get lower earnings when I put up too many ads. Smart Priced is the generally accepted term for those with low performing CTRs due to high impressions with relatively low click throughs. So in a sense, Google is putting you into a tier to earn lower pay because they deemed your site low earnings potential. Anyhow, after doing further research I think it's more of a case of diluted earnings potential. I'm going to make up an acronym DEP "Diluted Earnings Potential" theory. The highest paying ad on your adsense is the first one that shows up from left to right. So if you have multiple units, the left column is going to be higher earning than the right column which could pay pennies. So the less ads you have, the more likely they'll click a higher paying advertisement. If true, there really isn't any downgrading smart price algorithm. Just a theory... what do you guys think?
You're mistaken about smart-pricing. Smart pricing occurs when clicks aren't converting for the advertiser. It's not solely dependent on your CTR. However, a CTR below 3% does put you at great risk for smart pricing. As for your DEP theory, I doubt the earnings discrepancies are as far apart as you portray them to be. Yes, the first adblock is the one with the most earning potential. However, from adblock 1 to 2, were not going from $1 clicks to $.05 clicks. Take into consideration, however, that the quality of your traffic will also determine what specific ads you're being served. If you're driving social traffic, you should expect some pretty low quality ads that pay poorly in comparison to others. However, if the majority of your traffic is organic, your site will serve better ads.
I really suggest taking a look at your stats and analyzing them to see by what keywords and sources your traffic is coming from. I've done that recently and have determined which keywords to optimize my sites for which typically pay out higher than other keywords. Organic, targeted traffic from the SERPs will yield the best ads on your site and typically good payouts. Another factor to consider is where your site is ranked for that particular KW and which link on your ad the click on while on your site. The top link pays more than the bottom link in a 336x280 ad IMO.
Smart pricing has no relation to the CTR on your site. Low CTR will not get you smart priced. If you only get 3 clicks per 5000 and all three convert on the advertiser's site, do you think you would get smart priced? Heck no! If you get 2100 clicks out of those 5000 and none of them convert, well, that's a big CTR but smart pricing is likely in your future. Depending upon how you code your page, the left column may be last in the code. Google places higher paying (not necessarily to you, but throughout the network) ads in the first block it encounters in CODE ORDER, not in the order that they might appear on the page.
I am pretty sure I have been smart priced, any tips for improving this? I have one site that most cpms average around $8-$30 a click...but I am only getting a sad 10% of it. Other sites that have low cpms are barely making me a few pennies...I have enough clicks & page impressions I should be clearing at least $20-$100 a day, but only getting a few pennies/dollars from it is killing me. I saw a few wordpress plug-ins that could make it so any search engine traffic would see the adsense ads, which seems like it may be my only viable option pretty soon here...but it kills me to do that on the one site (which has the big paying keywords but search traffic isn't high because it's just not popular search term) There has to be a way to get out of the smart price sandbox, any ideas/tips/experiences?
The WP plugin you're referring to is Who See's Ads which gives you the option to show adsense to only search engine traffic.
There is also one that sounds like shylock holmes or something similiar (i've got a bad memory!) Anyways, just found this somewhat useful post to share : http://www.jensense.com/2005/10/25/...te-can-smart-price-an-entire-adsense-account/ Basically I am suspecting that one of my sites is poorly converting...but knowing which one would be tricky, since I have 5 of them with adsense. I did have it up on a few other useless places - just removed those now to see if that helps at all... The good news is apparently it is updated per week? So at least slowly and surely if I keep experimenting we might do okay...