AdSense CPA Peformance Trends
If you feel I’ve been neglecting you, it’s because my HP laptop is officially on the fritz due to a motherboard problem that many others have encountered. My life as an Internet marketer is on that laptop, so it makes it hard to do some things. The data’s fine, but it’s hard to use it without a computer. Still trying to decide what to do to move forward. I hope HP will repair it for free, but that will take a few weeks and what do I do in the meantime? What a pain.
Anyhow, earlier this week Google released an interesting whitepaper called CPA Performance on the Google Content Network, which I suggest you read when you have the time.
The term “CPA” refers to cost-per-acquisition, which is advertising speak for the price you pay to acquire a customer lead or sale. (It depends on what you’re targeting.) It’s a broader term than “CPC”, which is cost-per-click. CPA measures the cost of obtaining traffic and converting that traffic into customers and/or sales.
Because AdWords advertisers can optionally allow Google to track how well ad clicks convert into sales or leads (by inserting special tracking code that Google generates onto their landing pages), Google was able to crunch the numbers to see how well ads clicked on the content network (AdSense publishers like you and I) fared versus ads clicked on the search network (ads shown on Google-generated search result pages).
The main conclusion is that, on the whole, advertisers pay less per-conversion for ads shown on the content network versus the search network, but it’s not really much less, only 2.6% less. Does this mean that advertisers are paying almost the same per click on the content network? No. The really interesting part of the whitepaper from our perspective as AdSense publishers is this fragment:
… for the median advertiser, Content Network clicks are on average over 28% cheaper than search network clicks. This lowered cost is partially a result of smart pricing, which automatically reduces maximum CPC bids for certain pages in the Content Network based on their likelihood of driving actionable business results.
I would love to see the cost differentials between content and search described in more detail on a broad niche level, I’m sure that there are some niches where the difference is much more than 28%. Proper niche selection can make such a huge difference in this game. What we need is a formula that takes into account the CPC published in the AdWords Keyword Tool, which is for the search network and returns the likely equivalent CPC for the content network.
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21 Responses to “AdSense CPA Peformance Trends”
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I had some luck getting my data off of a failed drive by taking the drive out and hooking it up to a different computer with a BlacX docking station (Amazon sells them). In my case the boot sectors and OS was trashed, but the data was fine.
My data’s fine, luckily. The problem is with the motherboard, not the drive. I have bought an enclosure so I can take the drive and hook it up to another computer… but of course I’ll have to reinstall everything I use, etc. etc. (Once I find another computer…) Real pain.
It seems as though they are trying to promote their content network. Most articles that I have read suggest that you should just use the search network. Hmmm interesting.
Eric,
This is why you should ALWAYS back up all of your data to an external hard drive. I bought an external Western Digital 500 MB drive a few weeks ago from Best Buy on sale for $89.00. It’s nice.
Johnny
Eric,
One more thing: I also built my own computer (a desktop). If ANYTHING goes wrong with it, I can go down to the local computer store, buy a replacement part, and be up and running within a couple hours (worst case).
Building a computer is actually pretty easy to do. You just need the parts, an OS… and a screwdriver.
Johnny
Johnny, the drive’s fine… it’s just the motherboard (the graphics chip, actually) that’s not. I have the stuff backed up. And I have the laptop’s hard drive. Just a royal pain.
Eric
I would love to see the cost differentials between content and search described in more detail on a broad niche level, I’m sure that there are some niches where the difference is much more than 28%. Proper niche selection can make such a huge difference in this game.
What are your thoughts on the release of Microsoft’s new PubCenter?
Do you think they actually have a chance of replacing any of Google’s reach?
Scot
I sure think they have. There are many new applications in Microsoft’s new PubCenter that are much more user friendly, than in Google.
interesting stuff, I haven’t been that aware of how the pricing of content and search worked, I just knew that advertisers could elect different pricing for both models and that Google always gets a piece of the pie.
Sorry to hear about your laptop, my laptops keyboard is all wigged out and I got a new one on the way – so I feel ya!
I just say sorry to hear about your laptob. I think CPA is more difficult to me to get money because it has a visitor done more
“advertisers pay less per-conversion for ads shown on the content network versus the search network”
I always thought it was the other way around (because the quality of the visitors from the search network is higher, at least i presumed)..
@Johhny
Yes you can build your own computer, if you know how. Many do not (me included )
. Of course if you know how, this is better sollution.
I definitely have to agree with the Cool Gifts person from above, Google just seems to be advertising and promoting their content network for the sake of it.
Definitely interesting, will have to keep my eyes on this kind of stuff from Google as I’ve been slacking on their news lately.
And CPA can also mean cost-per-action.
Regards,
Daniel
I had the same problem with my computer last year and started a Amazon S3 account and used jungle to do automatic backups of all my most used folders.
It has saved me a couple of times and is especially good if I go somewhere and need access to my files.
Quentin
Depends on which niche you’re in. Certain niches will perform better with content network. Also you have to spend time to research and choose the content sites that your Ads will show up on.
First of all if you are planning to update your computer or to buy a new one I would recommend you to buy a computer with dual digital graphics card and to work with two monitors with min 20″. Believe me, you will be completely happy working.
About Adsense, well I have made campaigns through Adwords and Adsense, and of course Adsense where cheaper per conversion but my CTR was also lower. Google understands that in Adsense is more difficult to promote a product so normally doesn’t penalize low CTR opposite with Adwords, in which a low CTR will increase your min bids.
Depending on the campaign I use Adsense or Adwords.
Eric – Maybe its time to pick up a cheap netbook as a backup plan.
Luckily, I just bought an external HD. sorry to hear that buddy. HPs has good laptops in the market.
This is something that I experienced some time back, a week to a talk I was due to give.
My Windows XP computer started acting up and kept showing Blue Screen of death and won’t start up. I had to buy a used laptop just to swap the hard drives and was finally able to access my data.
I now have a USB memory key that I use for backup.
Google’s ability to track click-throughs that translate into actual sales is crucial for the future of internet economies. There is a lot of money poured into advertising campaigns that have tenuous (at best) evidence of effectiveness. This is an excellent way to quantity intangible efforts.
Now, if we only could measure and quantify brand penetration …