A follow-up to our referrals announcement

You may have seen our recent post about the upcoming changes to referrals promoting AdSense. Since we made this announcement, we've received a number of responses about the program being dependent on the location of the referring publisher. We've carefully considered your feedback, and have decided to modify the original plan.

The changes to referrals promoting AdSense will now depend on where your users are located, regardless of your location as a publisher. You'll earn $100 for every user you refer to AdSense who is located in North America, Latin America or Japan when they generate $100 in AdSense revenue within 180 days and they remove all payment holds. You'll no longer be paid for users you refer who are located elsewhere. These changes will go into effect the last week of January.

The option to add a referral unit for AdSense will reappear in your account when you target any referral unit to Japan and/or any countries in North America and Latin America. To ensure payment for valid conversions, we recommend that you check the targeting settings on your current AdSense referral units.


We've also heard from a number of you that you're no longer seeing recent AdSense referral earnings in your account. Please be assured that this is a display error -- past conversions have not been removed from your account. Our engineers are working hard to resolve this issue quickly.

Finally, we'd like to let you know about upcoming changes to the referrals programs for Google Pack and Firefox:

• Google Pack: Currently, you can earn up to $2 when a user downloads and runs Google Pack for the first time after being referred through your link or button. Starting the third week of February, each successful Pack referral will earn up to $1. This change will apply to all referrals for Google Pack and is independent of user location or publisher location.
  
  
• Firefox: We'll also be reducing payments for Firefox referrals from China during the third week of February. This specific referral payment change will only affect installations from users in China. Again, this is independent of your location as a publisher.
  

We understand that these changes may decrease revenue for some of you currently participating in these referrals programs. While it's our goal to help publishers earn as much as possible with the AdSense program, like any other referrals advertiser, we’re constantly evaluating our campaigns to make them effective and sustainable.

Again, thank you for your feedback and support of the referrals program.

Diagnosing and treating revenue fluctuations (Part I)

You love your website and you want it to thrive. You create content, manage your community, and keep an eye on your AdSense performance. If AdSense revenue is down, you're understandably concerned. If AdSense revenue is up, you're happy, but you want to know why. Revenue fluctuations are obvious enough when they occur, but the root cause isn't equally clear. It can be challenging for both new and experienced publishers alike to analyze their AdSense data and respond effectively to changes.

The goal of this post, and our follow-up later this week, is to help you understand the AdSense revenue model so you can diagnose and treat revenue fluctuations like an experienced MD.

Study up

The first step is knowing how the figures reported in your account (such as eCPM, CTR, and page impressions) interact to describe your total revenue. Think of each number as a variable in the revenue formula for your site. At the highest level, you can calculate revenue by multiplying your page impressions by the effective cost-per-thousand impressions (eCPM) and dividing by 1000.

Revenue = Page Impressions * eCPM / 1000

eCPM = Revenue / Page Impressions * 1000

The eCPM metric provides an estimate of how much revenue you can expect to earn for every 1000 page impressions. For example, if you serve 10,000 page impressions and earn $40, your eCPM is $4. If page impressions increase to 30,000, you can predict that you'll earn $120 given the $4 eCPM.

Most AdSense ads pay on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, so eCPM is really a measure of your average ad performance. Breaking eCPM into the click-through-rate (CTR) and the average cost that advertisers pay per click (CPC) gives you a more accurate measure of performance.

Revenue = Page Impressions * CTR * average CPC

Once you know your average CTR and your average CPC, you can predict how much revenue you'll earn for a given amount of page views. You can also analyze your revenue by looking at placement-targeted ads versus contextually-targeted ads.

Total Revenue = Revenue (contextual) + Revenue (placement-targeted)

While contextually targeted ads always pay per click, advertisers can pay for placement-targeted ads by impression (CPM) or by click (CPC). To account for both of these bid types, you should look at the average eCPM for placement-targeted ads. More simply, you can just add placement-targeted revenue to your contextually targeted revenue.

Revenue = (Page Impressions (contextual) * CTR * average CPC) + (Page Impressions (placement-targeted) * eCPM (placement targeted) / 1000)

Revenue = (Page Impressions (contextual) * CTR * average CPC ) + Revenue (placement-targeted)

Even though we're looking at contextual and placement-targeted revenue separately, don't forget that these two types of ads compete against each other in the auction. We'll always show the best performing ad, regardless of targeting type, so more competition creates higher winning bids.

Identify the symptoms

Now you're ready to diagnose any revenue fluctuation. Just like the revenue formulas above, let's start simple and gradually get more complex.

The first question to ask is: Did either your page impressions or your eCPM change? You can compare trends in both page impressions and eCPM using the Advanced Reports in your account.


If your AdSense page impressions have declined, you should determine if traffic to your entire site is declining as well. A web analytics tool such as Google Analytics can provide you with this information. In addition, you should check your pages for unpaid public service ads (PSAs).

If your eCPM is down, you'll need to dig one level deeper and find out if your contextual or placement targeted ad performance has dropped. You can also find this data in the Advanced Reports tab using the options shown below.


Let's consider your contextual ads first. The two key metrics to investigate are CTR and average CPC. CTR is given in your reports, but you'll need to calculate your average CPC using your favorite spreadsheet. (My favorite goes without saying). Please keep in mind that this is still an average CPC for your account and doesn't necessarily correspond with the price paid by any specific advertiser. Once you've narrowed the change to CTR or average CPC you're ready to start treatment.

For placement-targeted ads, you should analyze how much total placement-targeted revenue you are receiving and the average eCPM. Changes in either of these metrics usually indicate that advertisers are beginning or ending campaigns targeted to your site. Again, placement-targeted campaigns are more likely to be short-term than contextual campaigns.

That's all we have time for today -- now that you have a better understanding of what factors can affect revenue, don't forget to check back later this week for the second part of this series. We'll be discussing ways to treat revenue fluctuations based on the symptoms you've discovered.

Updated to fix typos

Diagnosing and treating revenue fluctuations (Part II)

Welcome back to the second part of our series designed to help you better understand revenue fluctuations. If you're just joining us now, or if you'd just like to brush up on those reporting terms before we dive in again, feel free to visit our previous post from earlier in the week.

Choose the right treatment

You're finished investigating the cause of the revenue fluctuations, and it's time to take action. Find the symptom you identified below for suggested treatments.

Page impression changes

• Check for AdSense technical issues or public service ads (PSAs). If ads aren't being served on your site, we aren't registering page impressions.
  
• Don't miss out on search traffic. Use Webmaster Tools to make sure that Google is properly crawling and indexing your site.
  
• Consider the promotions you have running for your site. Did an ad campaign end, causing a drop in traffic? Has a popular site linked to you, causing a spike in page impressions?
  

CTR changes

• A drop in CTR can be caused by a user interface (UI) that's not optimized or by poor targeting. Readers won't click on ads they don't see or find irrelevant. To improve the relevance of your ads, you might want to try section targeting.
  
• Check for crawl problems. If our system can't crawl your page, we can't serve relevant ads.
  
• If you've implemented or changed your ad server, check that there are no new targeting problems.
  
• Have you changed the look and feel of your site? Follow our optimization best practices whenever launching a site redesign. An easy way to start is to match the ad colors to the design of your site and choose a top performing unit such as the 300x250 medium rectangle.
  
• If your CTR has been in a slow decline, your readers may be experiencing ad blindness. Try testing new ad formats, placements, or colors.
  

CPC changes

• CPCs are determined by advertiser bids and are not directly under publisher control. Most large CPC changes are seasonal. For example, certain ad verticals attract more spending during the holiday or back-to-school seasons.
  
• CPCs can also fluctuate as advertisers begin and end their advertising campaigns.
  
• You can always improve your CPCs by choosing ad formats that support all ad types: text, image, video, flash, and gadget ads. More competition means higher advertiser bids.
  

Placement targeting revenue changes

• If overall targeted revenue is changing, determine what your average placement-targeted revenue has been for the past few months. Your goal is to determine if the changes in your recent earnings are part of a trend or a short-term earnings fluctuation.
  
  
  
• Publishers can experience spikes in placement-targeted revenue when advertisers run limited-time campaigns. For example, an advertiser may run a large placement-targeted campaign only during the opening week of a summer blockbuster movie.
  
• If you want to increase placement targeting over the long term, set up ad placements. This will make it easier for advertisers to find and target your site.
  

Finally, two more things...

Where are the changes happening?

Many AdSense publishers run multiple websites or have site sections that perform very differently. For example, the article section of a cell phone review site may have a higher eCPM than the forums. Whenever you notice revenue changes at the account level, always determine which of your sites or sections is causing the change. You can set up URL and custom channels to track all the important parts of your account separately. Knowing exactly what is changing and where will allow you to make the smartest decisions about what to do.

Taking seasonal fluctuation into account

Take a broader view and look for historical fluctuations in the metrics described above. Over the same time period last month or last year, you may find similar volatility in your eCPM, revenue, or page impressions. For example, you can compare the Mother's Day performance of a flowers and gifts site for 2006 and 2007. Is your current account performance consistent with the previous time range? If so, the revenue change you're investigating might reflect a recurring pattern.

I hope this series will help you get the most out of AdSense, and the next time your revenue changes, I hope it's for the positive.

The report of these link units is not exaggerated

I don't know about you, but I'm a big fan of data. I look at my own reports frequently and use channels to track the performance of individual pages and ad units so I can optimize my AdSense experience.

I'm also a fan of AdSense for content link units. As we've mentioned before, these units pack a big punch while conserving your screen real estate and can be a great addition to a page that's already using one of our many other products. We've also been doing a lot of work lately to improve the targeting of link units.

This is why I'm happy to announce that my two loves are now coming together. As of today, we've enhanced your reports so that you can view the performance of link units separately from your other AdSense for content units. Even better, the link unit-specific reports contain more information about your link units. A lot of publishers have been asking us for more statistics on their link units, such as the per-link CTR and the number of click-throughs to the link units results page.

To view your new, improved reports, visit the Advanced Reports page under your Reports tab and select AdSense for content. You'll notice a new option to customize your reports -- 'Choose Units'. A 'Combined' report will look just like the data you're used to seeing in your AdSense for content reports, while choosing 'Ad Units' or 'Link Units' will help you look at things with more granularity.


Please note that data is only available dating back to May 2007. Right now, we're having a little issue where, if you generate a report with a date range starting any earlier than May 2007, our report won't show any data, even if there is data after May 2007. Rest assured that our engineers are aware of the issue and are working to display all available data even if the date range starts before May 2007.

Remember, you're allowed to put up to three link units on any given page in addition to your three regular ad units. With better reporting and improved performance, now is the perfect time to start using link units if you aren't already.