Sootle Weblog

One thing about Google Adsense, they are always trying to make life easier for the advertisers. Hell, in the last six months, they’ve even started a trend towards getting advertisers to spend less money with them. Sure this will hurt their share price something fierce, but it will endear them to advertisers who sell products which don’t convert.

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I think most of us Google Adsense publishers have known this for awhile, but numbers emanating from Google indicate that less people are clicking on Google Adsense ads. The phenomena is having a depressive impact on Google stock, because so much of the company’s revenues are derived from ad revenues.

Continue reading “Less People Are Clicking On Google Adsense” »

Google had lower than expected earnings, and a big part of the reason is because they had a difficult time monetizing the social networking space, and guaranteed payments they are making to Fox for MySpace is causing a greater than expected loss.

Sergey Brin says not to worry, the company is innovating and should have an answer.

“We have a huge amount of social networking inventory, including the MySpace relationship,” Mr. Brin said. “I don’t think we have the killer best way to monetize social networks yet. We are running a lot of experiments and we have had some significant improvements. But some of the things we were counting on in Q4 didn’t pan out. There were some disappointments there.”

Of course, the main type of experimentation they’ll be doing is format and placement.

It’s not hard to understand why monetizing at MySpace could be difficult. A vast part of your audience is internet marketers, their robots, and kids.

Until Google can figure out a way to get a 14 year old to quit listening to a song and go purchase a product, the deal with MySpace may never pay off.

We’ll see what innovations they make in the coming months.

The only thing that remained constant with Google Adsense in 2007 was change. Google, despite the incredible success they’ve had with the Adsense program, had no fear when it came to introducing and testing new features. Hardly anything is the same any more, even how advertisers are charged for clicks. For some, these changes were extremely painful. For others, they served as a reminder to always remain flexible when it comes to running an online business.

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File this away as no big deal but kind of annoying. When you log into Google Adsense and look at your earnings, they are no longer sorted in descending order with the highest earning website at top. Now, of course this doesn’t really affect anything, but after seeing it like this for about 4 or 5 days, I have to admit it’s annoying!

You get used to a certain way of looking at things, and then all of sudden you’re forced to change your perception. Now I’m sure Google is furiously working on this to fix it (uhh, maybe), so there’s no need for real concern.

But I for one will not like this as the default, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who noticed this or is unhappy with it. I assume it will be back to normal soon.

Until then, I’ll just have to find something else to do

Being Smart Priced is no fun. Google introduced the concept of Smart Pricing to ensure that people buying advertising via Google Adsense wouldn’t get screwed. But a publisher feeling the pinch of the lower payment result from Smart Pricing, it will feel very much like he’s being screwed! The advertisers pays less and the publisher loses money. So this is one state of affairs that you don’t want to leave lingering about.

Continue reading “Getting Rid Of Smart Pricing” »

Google made some changes to their Adsense program concerning how clicks are counted. In the past, anytime anyone clicked in the background area of an ad, they would be automatically transported to the advertiser’s websites and the advertiser would be charged. This is no longer the case. I think the move is a good one, because it helps increase the credibility of the program with advertisers, which is needed to ensure long term success.

The change appears to be universally in effect now. I have noticed no real lowering of earnings, although the total number of clicks is definitely down. I guess that is exactly the type of result that would emanate from such changes.

This way the advertiser gets more bang for their buck and publishers get more per click. Since conversions will go up as a percentage, the overall feeling of “quality” should improve for publishers, advertisers, and surfers.

Is anyone else noticing a change?

Google has been rolling out new advertising options frequently, and it’s our job as intrepid webmasters to keep up with the advances. I’ve been experimenting with Google for Mobile, Google Referrals 2.0, and even Video Units, to see where they fit in my online offerings. So far I haven’t made too much with the new units, but I’m not giving up easily. If Google is taking the time to roll out new offerings, it’s because of fundamental shifts in how the perceive the market.

Continue reading “Using All The Tools In The Google Adsense Toolkit” »

People are always comparing their old Google Adsense numbers with new ones. If the CPM is down, they’re likely to complain. But you have to take a few factors into account before you automatically assume you’re a victim of a conspiracy theory. Adsense is only as good as the traffic you drive to your website, and if you traffic profile changes, so will the CPM.

Keyword values have a tendency to erode

Advertisers are always looking for ways to pay less for keyword ads, and webmasters who publish the ads always want more. This puts the two parties at odds, in a way. When you get used to a certain payment for your ads, you get a little upset when you see the CPM erode. Maybe you even blame Google, thinking it would help to explain their soaring stock price. But before you waste too much time muddling around in negativity, consider the idea that it might just be that the advertising mix that used to exist is gone, or your traffic has gravitated towards lower paying keywords.

I add content all the time, so it’s possible I’m driving lower paying traffic to my websites. It’s a chance I’m willing to take in order to enjoy the benefits of higher traffic. To me, higher traffic is higher earnings, even if you have a downward effect on CPM. Plus, gaining more traffic through adding content is a factor I can control, unlike so many others. So I add content, and I tend to see a slight downward trend over time as it relates to CPM, but not total earnings. I can live with that.

In the end, the best way to avert a downward CPM spiral is to keep on building some higher value CPM keyword pages along with your news-driven and lower paying keywords. If you add enough of them, you can stem the bleeding as it relates to your CPM.