Wasn't CPM the norm before the market went to CPC because it was easily gamed by publishers?
Also it's funny for them to say "Publishers gets 68%" which sounds huge but actually translates to a staggering 32% fee.
Also it's funny for them to say "Publishers gets 68%" which sounds huge but actually translates to a staggering 32% fee.
But Adsense was capable of earning so much more than what most could do themselves that I was happy to “pay” them when I ran a semi-popular site.
Though CPM can be gamed as well: put the ad at the bottom instead of the top. At the right instead of the left.
Can be gamed by publishers too: create an ad that users see but don’t click on, but act on anyway. E.g. an ad for a cola and then you drink one from your fridge.
I thought Google basically blended it all together when deciding which ad to present: a poorly clicked ad will need to pay more per click to get displayed.
Media/Display ads were normally CPM. Text ads were nearly all CPC (regardless of adwords, yahoo's search marketting, or y!travel's custom advertising market). Some display ads were CPC. There was a small amount of ads where it was CPA (cost per acquisition, advertiser only paid if the user purchased). CPA seemed like it was growing, but details of sales tracking and trust between parties probably gets in the way. Ocassionally we'd have some deal where we would have to put in links that might look like ads, but were unpaid.
Is there a reason this isn't more popular on its face? Only paying for an ad when it works seems like you could charge more for the when it works part as a service (in this case Yahoo Ads or Google Ads) but it allows businesses to run ads at a higher rate if they're willing to give up more money on impression (where impression = someone buys)
But what if you clicked through the ad, and then close the window, but later come back and book through the advertised site? Now we also need to have come to an agreement about 'lookback window'. Maybe a fair lookback window is different for different markets.
But it gets worse. What if you clicked through the ad on your phone, and then booked on your desktop? No tracking. Or even worse, what if it's a brand ad, and you come into the physical store and buy? Definitely no tracking. (well, some people try to get tracking for that, but it's pretty iffy)
Source: I was the lead engineer on the first release of AdWords.
As for %. They're bringing the customer, providing the tool, the payments and the collection of the money. All the publisher is doing is placing some code on their site. So 32% is actually a lot cheaper than a publisher hiring their own sales staff, buying their own ad servers, collecting and sorting the payment.
Just so you know.
There are many things that I could outsource that would be cheaper than doing myself (build/buy a car. Buy a cheeseburger as opposed to producing all the ingredients myself.) I am equally interested in what that 32% fee would look like in a more open market and then say if it is cheap or expensive.
This is splitting up AdSense such that any third-party buy-side operation that wants to use AdSense as the network is on equal footing with Google's own buy-side using AdSense. If anyone else can run that side of the equation better or for cheaper, they can now do so.
In other words: They say it costs $5 per click or $25 CPM, they just make that figure up. There is no real market driving that cost. It's 100% made up to maximize Google's profits.