Why lower eCPM?

Google Adsense has updated their blog once again with more information about the new ability to compare the contextual and site targeted CPM ads.

It seems that many people are a bit concerned about site targeted CPM ads showing a lower eCPM as normal contextual ads. The answer? It's perfectly normal. The CPM and contextual ads bid for the same ad spot on your site. Adsense ensures that the highest paying ad is displayed depending on specific ad spots and pages... so Google isn't doing you in.

The reason why the eCPM might appear lower is because the site targeted CPM ads are most likely being shown on the lower performing pages of your site. That means that the CPM ad unit doesn't have to bid as high a price as a premium spot would cost.

Best of all seeing as CPM ads are paid by impression, you are getting revenue from pages that might not have earned you anything. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me!

Site targeting or contextual: Enigma solved

Finally the enigma of whether your site is showing only contextual Adsense ads, or if someone is showing site-targeted CPM ads on your site, has been solved.

Google Adsense has introduced Advanced reports that now show you the amount of contextual ads displayed by your ad unit vs the amount of site-targeted CPM ads.

Having tried it out, it seems like a pretty neat feature. It doesn't tell you much than the amount of ad unit impressions, CTR, CPM and total earnings for both contextual and site targeted ads. That being said, it's much more information than you would normally have had.

According to these statistics, it seems that site targeted CPM ads seem to perform pretty well, although the CTR seems relatively low when compared to the contextual ads. That is to be expected though.

Things I would have liked to see included in the report is:

• The amount of advertisers that are currently targeting your site. Just something that would be nice to know.


• The ability to generate a report showing only contextual ad or only site targeted ad performance for a specified time period. It would make things much easier to compare the performance for an extended period of time.

So you Adsense guys... if you are listening take note.

Adsense Changes to referrals

It has been confirmed that Adsense has now changed the time limit for the Adsense referrals to 6 months instead of 3 months. This will give new publishers, who have been referred by other publishers, a bit more time to reach the $100 limit... and for the referring publishers to stand a larger chance of getting paid for that referral.

Below is the official response from an Adsense representitive:

I just wanted to confirm that based on publisher feedback, we've updated the time limit for an AdSense referral to earn $100 from 90 days to 180 days. If you've already been using referrals, the 180 days will be applied retroactively.

Update:
It seems the post went out way before an official post on the Adsense Blog. The guys there have just posted the time limit changes on the Adsense Blog.

For a change I was half a step in front of Google!