I remember the "good ol days well" when I'd sell campaigns for $25 cpm. Today I'd settle for a consistent $2 Adsense ecpm.

Problem I see is there are so many publishers. If some set a minimum and others don't its the site owners looking for a minimum click cost that will loose out.

Advertisers are just to savvy these days ar keeping the costs as low as possible.

Mack.

If some set a minimum and others don't its the site owners looking for a minimum click cost that will loose out.

And then we could have lots of threads such as:

"I specified a minimum for my account and my income has gone down. This can't possibly be a result of my decision, it has to be a Google conspiracy to punish me for establishing a minimum"

Advertisers are just to savvy these days ar keeping the costs as low as possible.

Well, maybe. Based on what I read over on the AdWords forum, a lot of them still seem a bit bewildered by the process.

FarmBoy

If I recall right, if you set up Google Ad Manager you won't have to "imagine" setting a minimum, you can actually do it.

Oddly enough, I can't recall anyone coming back around to tell us how well that worked.

Oddly enough, I can't recall anyone coming back around to tell us how well that worked.

which is probably a good indication of its success.

Either that or they are still trying to work out how on earth AdManage actually works.

I gave up trying to figure it out sometime ago.

I do think they should just simply allow us to put a minimum EPC into our GAS account, saves having to learn how AdManager works.

I used AdManager for some months.
But one fine morning I saw that there were no ads on my site and when I logged in AdManager it was not showing any channels or zones whatever I created had gone. Nothing was there.
Dont know whether this was a glitch for some time.
I removed all the adManager code from all my sites and put direct php code. After few days when I logged into the AdManager all the channels / zones were Back there showing properly as I created.
But after the earlier experience I dont have enough courage to put Ads via AdManager on my site again. Its too tedious the whole process.
Atleast when I put ads directly I have control on how / what and where to show the ads.
Just my 2 cents even if this is slightly off topic.

PS: I send this feedback to AdManager team through the feedback form I found on Admanager or some google admanager forum. Ofcourse no reply from google till date. :)

Rajiv

See, for a hobbyist webmaster it's kinda insulting to see CPC's of 1c or less (which actually translates into thousands of impressions for a few cents, or basically free).

I'd rather show a solid colored box instead of an ad if the advertiser doesn't want to compensate appropriately.

Advertisers are just to savvy these days ar keeping the costs as low as possible.

Whilst that may be so surely the savvy advertiser wants to be on the most popular and more highly-trafficked sites? Normal business practice would mean these are generally more expensive unless one feels like being a charity! And, of course, the competition between advertisers through AdWords should probably drive up the CPC rather than down...unless I'm missing something?

I'd rather show a solid colored box instead of an ad if the advertiser doesn't want to compensate appropriately.

I believe you can if you want to however I've never needed to do it yet but I'm sure someone will come along soon and tell you how.

Increased advertisers definitely increases earnings.

My click thru rate has been 4-6%, and my eCPM has been about $50 steadily for months now.

And then we could have lots of threads such as:

"I specified a minimum for my account and my income has gone down"

Or, what I would think would be a more likely complaint...

I specified a minimum for my account and my income has disappeared.

But one fine morning I saw that there were no ads on my site

Same happened here. I was trying out the "open in new window" style of adverts. Good idea, but showing adverts was a hit and miss affair. Most of the time there were blank spaces where the adverts should be.

With that, and the need for an IQ of 200 to understand how AdManager works, I gave up and reverted back to the old code.

I do think they should just simply allow us to put a minimum EPC into our GAS account, saves having to learn how AdManager works.

Lets think about this for a minute: If Google implemented a minimum EPC for Adsense accounts, how would it be structured?

Throw some ideas out there, and keep in mind that Google cannot simply allow every publisher to randomly select an EPC based on what he/she thinks he/she should earn:

1. Publishers will be allowed to set a minimum EPC based on some type of quality score (similar to Advertisers landing page quality)

2. The absolute minimum EPC would be $0.10 USD, instead of $0.01 USD. Based on a quality score, publishers with a certain quality score will never get the $0.10 USD minimum until their scores increase.

@lame_wolf: when there were no ads showing on your site, the ads you created in the admanager were there?
In my case both places (on site and inside admanager) i could not see ads. Inside admanager it showed only 1 or 2 ads that i created.
So as you rightly said I said to myself that i will never have an IQ of 200 so lets quit this admanager thing and back to good ol php and some basic coding skills.

Coming back to the discussion I think the time has come to experiment with mix of your own advertisers and adsense. As IncrediBill has suggested in other thread on WW.

Rajiv

Online Car Guy << thats amazing EPC

I'd suggest beyond belief.

IanCP ... $50eCPM is not beyond belief. I've had $50 eCPM as well.

I remember my Adsense rep was considering inviting me to a beta test they did before, but said that our eCPM was just too high for this beta test.

I know most get bottom feeder eCPMs -- but there are certain types of sites that attract highly responsive audiences (without tricks, I may add) and generate eCPMs of $30 and higher. On a regular basis.

I salivate at the traffic some of you say your sites generate. If only I have that much traffic for my 11-year old site, given its eCPM, I'd really really be happy.

@lame_wolf: when there were no ads showing on your site, the ads you created in the admanager were there?

IIRC, yes.
Sometimes they were showing, sometimes not. And it's not a case of not enough advertisers.

IanCP ... $50eCPM is not beyond belief. I've had $50 eCPM as well

Good luck to you mate. If you have high traffic you would be excited.

Yes, I can understand that certain niche, low traffic sites, garnering that kind of eCPM. I remember many years back greater figures being mentioned from a fellow who stickied me.

He had a particular site devoted to very, very heavy mining machinery, a unique field in which he was a retired expert.

Traffic was low by contemporary standards, CTR high but EPC sometimes $100+

Each piece of machinery sold for mega-millions.

Net monthly earnings? Less than he expected.

I am happy with our current traffic. We're in the 20,000 range of Alexa and currently #4 (used to be #1 for a long time) in our main keyword in Google, which has 496 million results. The top 2 sites all are print magazine publishers covering our topics. It's not as small a niche as the guy running the heavy mining machinery site

We are very happy with our earnings, though we've also seen a decline from its heyday a few years ago. Our eCPM has also decreased, although our numbers are still way higher than what I'm seeing being mentioned here. Let's just say that if my eCPM falls below $25, I'd cry.

But if we could get into the 10,000 range of site in Alexa in terms of traffic, given our CTR and eCPM, then we'd really really be happy

Well, then I'd expect many empty ad blocks or PSAs.

I would be more interested in limiting the number of publishers (=more quality control, removing publishers would be an easy way to fix the problem that there are 453048053894038038 publishers per advertiser) than any minimum (no point for advertisers earning 0.05 per click to pay 0.25 per click). Reducing the number of publishers would cause more competition among the current advertisers, driving the prices up...

I have seen low traffic pages with an early day click getting CPM in the hundreds. As the day goes on and more visitors fail to click the CPM drops. If you have a flurry of non clicking visits then you may loose out on high paying ads because they will not bring the CPM to the required level.

Reducing the number of publishers would cause more competition among the current advertisers, driving the prices up...

Yes it would. Easy to do the math on that one.

Conversely, what we seem to be seeing - and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong - is that Google is hammering the Adwords people, in many cases long time advertisers with 5 and 6 figure budgets getting axed for no apparent reason, while doing very little on the publisher side.

Wondering why your adsense payouts are less?