How to Improve eCPM for Blogger ? Strategies to Increase eCPM Drops

Posted in Adsense, Blogging

How to Improve eCPM for Blog Recently I am noticing a sharp drop in my Adsense eCPM. I don’t know why it happened but I was speaking to various other bloggers using adsense on their blogs and they too confirmed that it was the same with them. But some Bloggers said they noticed that eCPM had increased for the past few weeks.

Now what I am trying is to Find a solution for this problem of Sudden Low eCPM Rates of our Adsense Accounts.

After Looking around various Blog Posts & Googling I have found the following Reasons that affect our eCPM and here are some problems and their solutions for the low adsense eCPM.

Reasons for low Adsense eCPM for Blog

Smart Pricing – Our Blogs probably got Smart Priced. Which Happens people click ads, visit the site displaying the ad, but doesn’t convert into a sale (purchase,download,sign-up,etc). So, that’s a total loss of the advertisers money. Really? No, Because the Adsense Publisher is Penalized for it. How? That Right – Reduce the eCPM (other factors involved like ROI etc).

Lack of Ad Relevancy – Well this was supposed to be because our blog don’t always post about stuff mostly posted on the blogs. Exactly, I have been recently posted about Jai ho Remix, RapidShare Password, high speed photos, Freida Pinto which are not relevant to my niche. So, it strains the ad bots to show relevant ads. I know because I am getting a lot of Slumdog Millionaire Song Download Ads on many pages on my blog. So, This has really hurt my earnings.

Less Clicks – Obviously Lack of Ad Relevancy = Less Number of Clicks = Less Dollars.

Solution to Improve eCPM for Blogger

Solution to Adsense Smart Pricing – Smart pricing affects an entire account. It is not on a per page or per site basis. Also, One poorly converting site can result in smart pricing impacting an entire account, even sites completely unrelated to the poorly converting one. Finally, Smart pricing is evaluated each week. So removing ads from sites you suspect are converting poorly, for a week could result in seeing an adjustment to a higher smart pricing percent.

Improving Ad Relevancy – The best way to improve ad relevancy in your blogger blog is to Section Targeting. Although I haven’t any change in earnings but have seen a bit relevant ads showing Up. Check this Tutorial on Section Targeting at Google Help Group. Implement it on your blog ASAP.

Improving Clicks – Previously, I always used to match the Ads to the Content, means Title = Link color in Blog. The Rest Text & Url black. But that’s wrong according to Adsense Gurus. Like in Joel Comm’s Book I learnt that that Blue is the best Title Color for Ads to Stand out of Content and not look like an Ad. The Best Blues are #000080 , #0000FF & #006699 . Try it, it helped me a lot.

Focusing on the Niche – Well, Now I get to know. This means you have to always write posts in a blog which is related to your blog’s Topic. Mean Don’t get stupid like me writing about how little latika was sold by her father on a tech blog like this one. Also Read How to Write Targetted & Focussed Blog Posts.

The Best Position & Size – The Best Size is 336×280 Large Rectangle. And the best position in Just below the Post Title and above the content (see this blog). Also a 468×60 Text Ad just below the post.

Solutions By other Blogger & Readers

This is the Portion which will be updated frequently with the best Comments from Bloggers & Readers.

Abhishek (College Friend) : Ya, great post dude. I have been also having low eCPM on my adsense account. I’m one clueless and paranoid publisher. But, I tried to Improve it by showing all the 3 as Image ads. the CTR becomes very less but the eCPM increases a lot after 3-4 days.

Pavan Kumar (TechPavan) – Not in general, but for you in specific I feel these things might improve your earnings and get you out of smart pricing.

1. Remove link ad units entirely from your blog. You currently seem to use two such units one in navigation pane and other below the post. I guess the top one gets you much clicks and the reason is first time visitors get confused that it is the navigation bar. And I think the lower one gets NO or very less clicks. Also, you might have observed, their clicks won’t pay you good, low ecpm results.

2. Remove the ads from sidebar. Sidebar ads are mostly resulted by targeting your navigation area keywords which are not so good to see. And your home page is a mixture of all contents and hence it does not concentrate on a specific niche which results is ads which are just better than psa, to be specific in India, they are bharatmatrimony and monster jobs. Removing sidebar unit entirely may reduce the total clicks you get, but the earnings would increase better.

And what I feel is ctr has no relation with smart pricing. I have ad units with ctr less than 1, but they pay the normal expected price as any other ad on my pages.

Harsh (Shoutmeloud) – Pavan If I’m not wrong text ad link units will not effect your ecpm in any ways, so its best way to maximize your revenue using smart placement.
Correct me if I’m wrong.

Honey Singh (HoneytechBlog) - As @Pavan already described “Text Link units” works best in patch with the navigation and most of the blogger use this kind of style.Moreover ads in single posts perform better than anywhere else.The yielding units in the single posts are rectangles and you should use text ads after the post title.
The ads after the post title results in maximum income.

Mohit (Techeguide) – Adsense Smart Pricing is what Google mark publishers who have placed ads on more than one website/blog with the same adsense account, if one of those blog/website doesn’t perform well than thi
s’ll affect the overall account. I totally agree with Pavan that CTR has no relation with Smart Pricing.

@ Honey Singh
Also I’ve read in Adsense TOS if you’re placing ads below the Title than you should add “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsors” as the Title of the ads.

More to Come

Amal Roy :

Excellent Post friend. Your site Rocks! I love your site. I have a tip.

Using the text ads (only) is more good than using the image ads. Text ads have more CTR than image ads and also they give more money.

Pavan Kumar :

Not in general, but for you in specific I feel these things might improve your earnings and get you out of smart pricing.

And what I feel is ctr has no relation with smart pricing. I have ad units with ctr less than 1, but they pay the normal expected price as any other ad on my pages.

Wish a quick recovery for you.

Pavan Kumar :

Forgot to tell you. The sidebar ad will show up even in the google custom search results page which violates adsense tos:

AdSense for search results pages may show only a single ad link unit in addition to the ads Google serves with the search results. No other ads may be displayed on your search results page.

Debajyoti Das :

Thank You ! Thank You Pavan for your Absolutely Wonderful Comment and also the Tips about about How Social Media Traffic Affects eCPM you told me Earlier

Harsh Agrawal :

Pavan If I’m not wrong text ad link units will not effect your ecpm in any ways, so its best way to maximize your revenue using smart placement.
Correct me if I’m wrong.

Venkatesh :

Nice insight into the issue.
More amusing was your trait to accept your previous mistakes publicly. I subscribe to your feeds. So when you posted about lathika, slumdog … & likewise stuff, i felt that those posts did not sit well with your blog. Your are going great guns with your amazing tech stuff & daily updates.
Gr8 post.

Debajyoti Das :

@ Venkatesh – Thank You …. I liked your Comment Very much … I am waiting for more .

@ Harsh – Thank You, In fact the Text Link units in the navigation area make me almost 30% of my total revenue.

Honey Singh :

As @Pavan already described “Text Link units” works best in patch with the navigation and most of the blogger use this kind of style.Moreover ads in single posts perform better than anywhere else.The yielding units in the single posts are rectangles and you should use text ads after the post title.
The ads after the post title results in maximum income.

Mohit :

Adsense Smart Pricing is what Google mark publishers who have placed ads on more than one website/blog with the same adsense account, if one of those blog/website doesn’t perform well than this’ll affect the overall account. I totally agree with Pavan that CTR has no relation with Smart Pricing.

@ Honey Singh
Also I’ve read in Adsense TOS if you’re placing ads below the Title than you should add “Sponsored Links” or “Sponsors” as the Title of the ads.

Mohit :

@Venkatesh

Image ads do increases eCPM and also i agree that text ads do the same. But my experience says that text ad brings the result only after when they are clicked while Image ads don’t need any click.

Debajyoti Das :

@ Honey Singh – Ya I agree that 728×15 text links works best below the Navigation Bar. Well I think this was first seen by me on Amit Agarwal’s Blog (labnol.org). Where he Beautifully matched the Adslot below the Navigation link bar. Very Effective indeed.

Debajyoti Das :

@ Mohit – Thank you moting for leaving your Comments. Wating for more Ideas from you.. You are Right its against TOS to place ads just below Title. Therefore in this Blog I have added an Info bar {comments, labels, bookmark} etc.

But, I have one Blog only. In fact I am also using Pavan’s Tip on Allowed Sites to protect my Adsense from false Impressions.

I have Only One Blog. Then why this sudden drop ?? The Sad Part is this month in April I have earned almost half that of March.

amjad mallick :

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