Oops, strike that - I should have said "I have reason to THINK that Google knows..."

Things must be bad for many publishers

I don't see anything in hat email you could draw that conclusion from. When I saw the words,I took them to mean that there's scary news out there, but don't worry. We're doing cool stuff and will keep doing cool stuff yadda yadda so don't have a panic attack.

Yes, Google had a reason to send such a message. I can imagine all sorts of reasons that don't include things being bad for many publishers. Unless you're privy to information I am not.

[edited by: martinibuster at 9:23 am (utc) on Oct. 31, 2008]
[edit reason] TOS. No Email Excerpts Allowed.... [/edit]

Publishers look for alternatives

Publishers are always looking for alternatives, and so they should. But the idea that Google is worried by an outflow of publishers has top be very wide of the mark.

Losing 50,000 publishers (and a billion+ sites) would not hurt Google in the least, and would helpful to the rest of us publishers.

For Google, even losing 20% of publishers would (at worst) raise advertisers costs (more competition for space), and at best, be a spring clean. Google's profits would be unchanged, as they can adjust their 'take' at will.

For publishers, a decrease in outlets would raise the take for those that remained, and maybe put a little pressure on Google to 'police' the arena more carefully - all good news.

What is more worrying would be a large increase in publishers, as other income streams fail for webmasters.

That would still be good for Google - but could be dire for existing publishers.

I had my best day on the 29th as well, averaging between 40 and 60 cents/click. Now I'm back in the gutter with 5-10 cents / click. I didn't get the email, but from the looks of it, I should have.

Maybe they sent the email 'pep talk' to those who answered certain questions on the survey that came out a few weeks ago.

I doubt that. I got the email but didn't get the survey.

I doubt that. I got the email but didn't get the survey.

That's interesting.

I misread your post.

I ddn't get any survey either. No email, no survey.

I feel so... so... inadequate.

No email for me either, the recent earnings trend has been slightly up for me in spite of the sector in general being down and projected further down in the event of a deepening rec(depr)ession.

We probably don't have enough publishers here to draw a valid conclusion, but it would be interesting to know if there was a common thread among those that got the email.

Interesting thought, although it could be the common email curse of sending a message to your 1,000 person subscriber list and only 800 reach their destination.

Also, ASA tells us here whenever maintenance is scheduled. Does the absence of ASA posting that message here mean the message is less important than notification of scheduled maintenance?

As for me, my AdSense income is up and steady even though I have been reducing the displays of AdSense on my sites - completing removing AdSense from many pages. AdSense certainly knows that if someone there is paying attention.

Although if someone is paying attention, they know I've replaced AdSense in many instances with another PPC program or other source of income.

FarmBoy

I think a lot of people made a mistake by assuming developing a good useful site will make them rich.

I didn't say anything about assuming a good useful site would make me rich.

The rich part was just an unintended consequence.

FarmBoy

For at least two years, we've been shifting from adsense to our own product sales, with great success, and we continue to shift further...

I agree coachm, I do the same thing.

You CAN place advertising a la adsense...

You know, other than one short trial, I don't use AdSense to promote my own products. Some of my affiliates do, but I don't.

I personally found the AdWords side of the equation to be complex, it's easy to blow through a lot of money there if you aren't careful and it seems to require a lot of time to stay up on the latest developments to keep from blowing even more money.

FarmBoy

I don't read all that much into it. I got the letter too, and October has been my second best month of the year, and 2008 is about 165% of 2007 as far as total earnings. I took AdSense off some sites, but added it to other sites. I don't think there's some common denominator - I expect they'll eventually send it to everyone.

I expect they'll eventually send it to everyone.

Well yeah probably, but what fun will that be? Rampant speculation is a lot more interesting :)

Losing 50,000 publishers (and a billion+ sites) would not hurt Google in the least...

Not necessarily.

Losing much less than 50,000 publishers could hurt Google if the lost publishers are those valued most by advertisers.

Some publishers provide more value to advertisers than others in several different ways. Without those publishers, advertisers will leave, in whole or in part, and that means less revenue for Google.

FarmBoy

We're getting a little too speculative here, but surely the publishers who are popular with advertisers are unlikely to be leading the rush to other services (even assuming there were viable competitors)?

An inrush of new publishers, whose alternative affiliate efforts have failed is, IMO, much, much more likely.

In every recession, brand leaders have a big advantage over small operators. No guarantees, of course, but if I were a gambling man (and I am), I'd see Google as a dead cert winner, a safe haven, a beacon of cash in a tumbleweed-bestrewn wilderness, and [insert superlative of your choice here].

But good news for Google is not necessarily good news for Adsense publishers. Far from it, in fact.

It is strange that those who rely on Google adsense don't know why they received that email out of the blue.

If you follow the advertising market, you will know that what is coming down the pike has been described as,"for the ad business, this will be “an unparalleled recession in severity and duration” in the post-World War II era."

Google is giving the Adsense crowd a warning that advertising budgets have contracted and to expect diminished payments.

Google is giving the Adsense crowd a warning that advertising budgets have contracted and to expect diminished payments.

Maybe, but you couldn't prove it by *my* AdWords clients.

Cut through the fluff folks, business is business and last I checked GOOG was a publicly traded revenue focused machine.

That machine made this decision based off of something that was in the best interest of the business. It was a business decision based in someway off of financial reasoning.

My two cents is they see something in scale that we as individuals do not and I wouldnt be suprised if they made a algo off of this data and sent out emails to accounts that fit the algos results.

Maybe the publishers aren't leaving for another program maybe they are leaving as in closing their sites and getting a "real" job.

But that might not matter - what we need to know is what are the advertisers doing?

When sales slow down is the reaction to advertise less? Or are they just closing too?

Personally to be blunt, a starvation run causing marginal publishers to leave the system is a GOOD thing.

The more the weaklings are weeded out the better the pie for the rest of us.

I get sick of hand holding publishers in help forums who haven't got a hope with adsense because they are just in it for the supposedly quick money. Countless "money making" cut n paste blogs could disappear from the net and no one would ever notice the absence.

Let the culling begin.....

I'm curious as to what the criteria was as to who got the letter and who didn't.

>> criteria <<

Maybe publishers who are doing fine, but who may be in sectors that are more at risk?

Just another wild speculation :)

[This thread made it to the front page?)

hand cured Italian pork cheeks

martinibuster I am actually starting to like you.

Got the letter, business down 20% from last year, click price and CTR combined.

hand cured Italian pork cheeks

martinibuster I am actually starting to like you.

Got the letter, business down 20% from last year, click price and CTR combined.

Wish I could say the URL of my site. Been a long time reader but not often a poster. I didn't get the email but my revenue the last week or so has been down...my highest earner is a php based site with little to no ability for user content creation. I want to switch but lack PHP skills; my other sites are ASP based with user content creation ability.

Anyways, my highest earner at some points made $100 a day last year (php based). It's slipped down to half of that this year and I can rarely ever get it above 70 in a day now; if it goes up it goes back down right away. And the last few days to a week now the high earner is at $30 a day which is absolute garbage. Not only that but it seems to me Adsense eCPM has come to somewhat of a standstill. eCPM for my site now (with 1 k - 2.5k page impressions daily) is usually below $30. It seems Adsense just doesn't pay as well as it used to...when I update my site I notice Adsense pays more, but it's difficult to always add new content. I wish Adsense would stay fluid and reward sites like mine (my site is #1 in the entire industry for its search terms and its informative knowledge for widget enthusiasts)

Adsense seems to set eCPM (more important, the cost per click) on a daily basis; some days seem to pay better then others. How is that right. Google's equations for determining how much they get paid from the pie seem to be in an everflux just like the engine.

However, on the opposite of this, some people are indeed doing better. So it goes to show that Google may just want to give a comforting hand to its "employees" in their time of need. I would love to invent my own PPC system and set my own pay per bid. And I'd love to know what industries some of these others are in who are saying they make so much more then me :)

Maybe, but you couldn't prove it by *my* AdWords clients.

Yep. The average CPC for the most common keyword search phrases related to my #2 site keeps increasing.

FarmBoy

When I got the email, this was my take. For the past four months, every month, I have made almost the exact same dollar amount give or take a few bucks. Looking at those particular four months, July, August, September and October clearly something is wrong. While July had major holidays, August didn't and was had the back to school shoppers. Both months were 31 days, so August I should have made significantly more. I made $40 less. This is the first year this has happened.

Then, September rolls around. Another major holiday, only 30 days, and not cold enough in the northern states to really help yet, weather wise. I made $5 less than August.

Ok. Big guns out, it is October. No major holidays, 31 days, this is my big month of advances out of the dog days of summer. Not this year. Once again, I am close to the past 3 months in earnings, with only one word to describe it, "weak". I made $5 less than September. This has NEVER happened. Had I made hundreds of dollar less, it would have been less obvious to me, that Adsense is tinkering with my earnings. This very narrow margin in changes, given I am a four figure earning publisher, is just too odd, for four months to begin to believe the bottom line was ramdom and without Adsense intervention.

The odds of me making nearly the same amount of money for four months straight, given all the variables involved, and my history with Adsense the past four years for each of those months has to be so rare if it were beef, I would have ecoli by now.

Clearly it is tied somewhat to the "fear factor" gripping the U.S., with so much bad news on the radio, televisions and internet, people ARE pulling pulling back. I don't dispute that. But, the bottom line at Adsense, for me, seems too "pat", as if, like many of you have said over the years, there was a "cap" on earnings.

My first feelings about this fixed amount not changing, when it seemed random back in August was, "well, at least we are holding our own and not dropping by huge numbers." While I still somewhat feel that way, I can't help but begin to wonder if this is just my "cap", and I am actually losing money from what I should have earned had the cap been removed.

Then the email arrives. What am I to think? I think they are trying to make excuses to me, that the "finanical crisis" is the blame for this past four months' oddly even earnings. I see it as the first in a series of letters to publishers, blaming the big picture for lower publisher earnings, when the reality is this.

If I am earning less, and you are earning less, and others are earning less, then Google should be earning less from their primary cash cow. If not, they have given themselves a bigger cut to satisify investors, while you and I take it on the chin. It will be interesting to see Q4 earnings report and forward looking statements.

The good news for me, is that this four month spell has pushed me to come up with an inovative new way to add a large number of new "in-house" advertisers and by the end of this year, I will be even more diversified than I am now.

Currently my business revenue is 20% in-house, 73% Adsense and 7% combined other ad servers. I am going to work on getting Adsense down to 50% and in-house up to 43% during this next year, becoming less reliant on Adsense and their lack of transparency that leads to these kinds of threads.

All I know is that this October I had a 50% drop in earnings over October 2007. And nothing much has changed except that I added a lot more content. There is definitely something going on that we don't know about (or are at a loss to figure out). And I did not get a letter from Google as many of you did. Maybe they're showing me the door?

I got the letter, too. Very nice letter indeed. Not much we can do unless the economy starts picking up again. I know many advertisers have cut their ad budgets and that's the reason for the falling revenue these past few months for us publishers.