As the saying goes, “once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but three times is a trend.†We saw our AdSense revenues take a dip in March, and they took another dip in April. This month? Still down. Now, when looking at the numbers, the page views are consistent, the click through percentage is similar as well. However, there is a dramatic drop in the revenue earned per click.
It is clear that Google has shifted their model of revenue sharing with their AdSense partners. This has been very hurtful to sites that use AdSense as their main revenue model. This trend should continue until Yahoo! comes out with their “AdSense mode†sometime this year. With the added competition, Google will need to shift and share when they play in the sandbox with us.
Claude Gelinas says
I’m under the impression the lowered revenue stream going to web publishers has a lot to do with the DoubleClick acquisition and its low-value CPM-based inventory of “mass market ads”.
Pay-per-click is a akin to a Ferrari while CPM is akin to a bus ride.
They just don’t compare.
Nevertheless, Google has mixed both, in AdSense — and I think that’s why we’re getting hit so badly…