The company I work for also has adsense and they have higher CPCs for the same lame ads.

That is very interesting. Maybe use this known fact as a starting point in your analysis and make some educated guesses as to why you are treated differently. I am assuming of course that the two websites are of the same topic.

I'm curious why it is you are so confident that it's Smart Pricing that is causing your stats to be lower than you want.

FarmBoy

There is something definitely wrong with smart pricing if genuine websites are suffering and new MFA websites are gaining & crowding the market.

Why do you assume that the MFA Web sites aren't being "smart priced" to an even greater degree than you are? Junk AdSense sites are like the thin affiliate sites that cluttered Google's SERPs not too many years ago: Most of them are probably hoping to make up in volume what they're lacking in EPC, CTR, and eCPM.

ganeshcp,

Don't take this wrong, but these AdSense not paying threads are getting predictable (Points and counter points).

ganeshcp,
Maybe consider If your site the same topic (or range of topics) as your 'employer's' site. Does each of these site display it's own unique content?

Then maybe look at other obvious differences, such as the difference between your inbound traffic and theirs, traffic volume etc.

Next maybe look at the main differences between your site and the other site in terms of visitor motivation: Are your visitors likely of visit your site with the same intentions as the rival 'employers' site you mentioned? Is the rival site selling a product? Is your site also selling a product, or is it purely informational?

Forget about speculating about smart pricing and how MFA'a are performing for now. Maybe concentrate on facts which are available and keep an open mind without drawing any hard and fast conclusions.

Ditto what Edge said

@Scurramunga The only similarity between my site and my employer's site is that they fall under the "Entertainment" category. My employer only uses its youtube channel to monetize, while I have pages of content. Ironically I had setup the youtube channel and suggested Adsense too.
I feel Google doesn't work so well with International markets. There is hardly any contextual advertising going on. Like I said, I see mainstream ads for banks, portals & marriage portals on all sites that run adsense & originate from my country - all through the year!

I'm not sure if Google is to blame for this or Advertisers who cast a wide net. Why would people click on anything if you are going to show them the same ads through the year!

@Farmboy - I'm certain its smart pricing because of comparison with my employer's account (which is brand new). Both my site and my adsense account is 6+ years old and my site has a good page rank as well.

@Edge - I've never posted about random streak of lower earnings. Even I used to cringe when I saw posts about "low adsense earnings". But here I'm trying to raise an important point about mindless smart pricing and adsense's performance in international markets.

@signor_john - If MFA are being smart priced, why are some still around and why do new MFAs pop up every now and then? Can we be certain they are not making any money? I'm used to seeing .01 per click and I think that's as far as smart pricing goes! If we are all so afraid of getting banned by Google, why aren't actual MFAs getting banned?

Country might play a big role.

Let's say I have 2 sites: A is about Hollywood stars, B is about Bollywood stars
A is hosted in the US, B is hosted in India
A and B get the same amount of visitors a month.
Neither A nor B are smartpriced.

I'd seriously bet A will earn a lot more money than B at the end of the month, plain and simple economics, no need to blame it on smatpricing.

I feel Google doesn't work so well with International markets. There is hardly any contextual advertising going on.

Depends on the country.

I'm certain its smart pricing because of comparison with my employer's account (which is brand new). Both my site and my adsense account is 6+ years old and my site has a good page rank as well.

You can't be certain of anything.

If MFA are being smart priced, why are some still around and why do new MFAs pop up every now and then? Can we be certain they are not making any money?

I didn't suggest that they aren't making any money. What I said was: "Most of them are probably hoping to make up in volume what they're lacking in EPC, CTR, and eCPM."

Unlike, say, NYTimes.com or even Mysite.com, an MFA site has no editorial overhead and is very cheap to create and operate. Even if it's earning a penny a click, it can be run at a profit, especially if it has enough pages (or if the owner has enough MFA sites) to generate thousands of penny clicks per day. What's more, a profit that might not be acceptable to THE NEW YORK TIMES or an adult in New York or Frankfurt might be perfectly acceptable to someone in a low-wage country, or to a student or a person with a day job who's looking for supplementary income.