Forum Moderators: martinibuster
What I am beginning to think is that Google likely has so many MFAs, and cutting them off would hurt their bottom line significantly. So, in effort to best manage them, they try to spread them around in such a way that they are spread across the backs of all publishers as befittingly as possible using an algorithmic system. I think that the biggest determinant is the logarithmic rank of the publishers site itself. Sites with higher ranks see less MFAs for lesser periods of time, sites with lower ranks see them more frequently, and for longer periods.
I am basing this on observations I notice on this and many other forums where I know the various URLS of lots of publishers, and subsequently notice another pattern which supports this. The publishers with the older, more established sites seem to moreso deny that MFAs are frequent on their sites, while the opposite is true for people with newer sites. Plus, just look around the Net at the ad quality on some of the "a-list" sites: do you see as many MFAs on those sites as you would on some newer ones hosted on blogspot or freeservers?
Wouldn't it make sense to assert that Google's site ranking algo is what is used to manage the display of MFAs across the board?
After all, if the display/dispersion of MFAs were left to randomness alone, then they would risk inundating some older, valuable high traffic sites with garbage ads. And add to that, a newer my-spam-keyword.com could get the prime ads...It just wouldn't make sense.
That would be an obvious threat to the integrity of the program itself as it would, 1) negatively affect the earnings of the otherwise high-earning site, (assuming that MFAs pay less, which they likely do) and 2) risk damaging the user experience of the site, which in turn reflects back on the Adsense program itself.
Another question - could it be that smart pricing has driven up the cost of space on older, established and A-list sites, while Joe Blog is made cheaper by smart pricing? That would explain your observation that much of the MFAs appear on blogs and freeservers. MFA's make money by buying low and selling higher, which means they generally target the less expensive ad space, where ever that might be.
Also, ad spending is linked to monthly budgets (and holidays, special occasions). When real (non-MFA) advertisers are spending, prices go up. Have you seen an end of month drop/beginning of month spike?
I agree with Nonni - old, established sites attract more real advertisers and therefore MFAs drop out. With new sites, the eCPM is rather low until Google has figured out what your site is about - MFAs jump on it to get cheap clicks (which is what they need for their business).
I question your assumptions, your evidence, your reasoning, and your conclusions
And to say that Google carries a list of MFAs and spreads them around is pure evil, while we all know Google does not have an evil bone in it, they're angels and carry weights in their pockets to keep them from hovering.
And please lay off old established sites, the last time those were mentioned, I took a deep plunge and am yet to recover!
Could it be that Google "uses up" budgets for quality/better paying Ads first. If some advertising budgets are allocated on a monthly basis, could quality ads be exhausted and more an more MFAs rise to the top until the next month's budget?
Also G needs to rotate ads to some degree to let new folks get some page views - otherwise the ads would become very static, like YPN.
Thoughts of 'money grab', overly complex algorithms, or other non-scalable scenarios are likely to take you off barking at the wrong tree.
Reading the Adwords forum you'll see that there is currently a tremendous shakeup in the content and search networks for advertisers - most feel these are errors on G's part with more shakeup coming this week.
ps. if things really go whacking next week you may see some of my ads on your site!
you may see some of my ads on your site
OhOh, Just when I filled up my block filter ;-)
If they didn't, wouldnt they then risk damaging some of their higher earning sites, by inundating them with a greater longer-lasting level of poor quality ads? (Thats a pretty good question, to me.)
If not, then it would be some sort of "accident" that some sites are plagued more than others with poor, misleading, trashy or generally poor quality ads. I doubt that anything that Google does is an accident.
As for "evidence", I think there is very little of that in most cases when making posits about how Google works. Most of the "knowledge" we have about it is speculative at best IMO.
And to say that Google carries a list of MFAs and spreads them around is pure evil, while we all know Google does not have an evil bone in it, they're angels and carry weights in their pockets to keep them from hovering.
I would think that it would be the opposite of "evil", as they would be protecting the viability of the most established sites, while making the newer sites with lower ranks establish ("prove") themselves. If that is "evil", its no more evil than natural selection. G isnt out to make anyone's life hard, its merely out to manage (ie. evenly and fairly distribute) its product in a sustainable manner.
Just a thought, and it may not cover everyone's experience, but is it possible that this isn't about the MFAs but about the quality advertisers?
Pengi this is exactly what I am saying! We, as publishers look at them as "MFAs", but, does Google? I doubt it. To them, its all about rank. Rank is what Google has built their system on.
Thoughts of 'money grab', overly complex algorithms, or other non-scalable scenarios are likely to take you off barking at the wrong tree.
I apologize if I came across as suggesting, implicitly, that Google is doing this as a "money grab". What I see going on here is all about them trying to manage ad/advertiser quality, in a scalable and sustainable manner. Google has varying levels of ad quality, and I would think must have some means of deliberately distributing them, to "manage risk". How they do this, despite evidence, is conjecture.
