This occurs to many as a mystery, but when you look at Google’s point of view, it makes good sense. We just don’t like what it does to our Adsense checks #:>(
But, in Google’s defense, lets see what happens to a normal Adsense event:
The first time a particular Adsense ad is shown on your site, it has a certain click value to Google, and of course the advertiser, usually an Adwords customer.
So lets say the click value for the sake of this discussion is $0.25 – Google sees this new visitor to your page, they figure he has real value, and will pay you $0.25 for the click if it happens.
In this case, the click doesn’t happen.
Then in a few days, this same visitor returns to your site, and the Adsense script runs and notices that this visitor’s i.p has been logged as being to your site before, and knows which ad was shown. Google looks for a different ad, and if available and in context, it is displayed. Believe me, Google works very hard to not run redundant ads. If they do appear numerous times, it is because of a number of things like:
- the visitor’s ISP uses a dynamic IP , so Google doesn’t know for sure who is visiting, or visiting again;
- the ad pay rate is high enough to trigger it in Google’s revenue model favor; or
- there are simply no other ads. Google hates to waste an ad exposure. That’s how they get paid, right?
Anyway, in our little scenario, Google has tried to thrill this visitor with contextual ads on two different occasions, no click occurred, but if it had, you would have received $0.25 either time.
Now, next week rolls around, and the visitor with the same IP visits again, and Google doesn’t have a new ad to fit your context (it happens). So, they show the first ad again, but guess what? The value of this exposure to Google has gone down. Now, if the click does occur, Google is going to pay you a whopping $0.17 instead of the original $0.25.
This makes sense, as Google has determined that your site is getting repeat traffic (good for you) and this is not good for the guy buying the Adwords, and not good for Google.
Now, I know this goes against advertising convention where a message must be beatten into everyone that walks by Google, but it is the way it works.
So what can we learn from this?
The long and the short of it is this; If you run an Adwords-based revenue model for your site, you need to be bringing in a fresh stream of visitors all the time. Old visitors are good for you, but not attractive to Google.
This means membership sites are a little less than ideal for Adsense model sites.
So to summarize;
Google will never reveal completely to us how they pay Adsense users, but we can deduce quite a bit from testing. It ceratinly appears that Adsense is DESIGNED to drop what the publisher is paid for a click over time because to Google a visitor that is on your site for the 10th time is not worth as much as a first time visitor, so Adsense HATES repeat ad views, and as such, the clicks go down in price over time for any given visitor.
Now, stop depending on Adsense, and try something else. Maybe RSS clickbank feeds, AdBrite, pepperJam or the like.
Cheers,
Ron Davies
[tag]Advertiser Checks Contextual Ads Dynamic Ip Few Days Good Sense Google Isp Mystery Occassions Occured Point Of View Revenue Model Sake[/tag]
