Smart Pricing - good or bad?

"Smart Pricing" for AdSense publishers has recently been the talk amongst webmasters. For those of you that don't know what it's about. In a nutshell 'smart pricing' is an algorithm Google AdSense uses to track the conversion from their Adsense ads. You get paid less/more depending on the conversion of the ads you place on your site.

Now there has been lots of complaints about this. Most publishers are seeing quite a large decrease in their revenue, and some of them have even decided to ditch AdSense altogether. Most of this is due to unfounded rumours or plain misconceptions floating around on the Net. Google has posted some facts about smart pricing on their AdSense blog in order to clear up some things.

I don't think that 'smart pricing' is a bad thing. Sure we'll see lower income at the start, but I think as publishers and advertisers get used to this that we can actually expect higher revenue. Advertisers will see a higher return on their investments and are more likely to up their bids, thus providing publishers with higher income.

Smart pricing can also be a well needed answer to 'spammy sites' that are being built purely for Adsense. I'm guessing that this is actually the primary goal. Spammy sites will not attract much targeted visitors, and visitors are less likely to click on ads on sites they don't trust or find useful. As a result the webmasters of the spam sites, are those more likely to see the largest decrease in revenue, making it less profitable for them to create the spam sites in the first place.

Hopefully it might even contribute to a WWW with less spam sites in general. Making it much easier for you to find a site that actually provides you with the information or service you wanted to start with. That can only be a good thing...