[thelist] question about ad sales

[Brian Cummiskey]

>> supposedly the best banner ad delivery company around nowadays is 
>> google. learn more at http://www.google.com/adsense/

While I agree for the most part, the payout has dropped DRAMATICALLY
each month since I've signed up

The past few months for me look like this:

July 18, 2003  Payment sent  (751.24) 
August 20, 2003  Payment sent  (556.95)  
September 24, 2003  Payment sent  (421.91)  
October 27, 2003  Payment sent  (470.79)  
December 9, 2003  Payment sent  (395.24)  
December 17, 2003  Payment sent  (362.13) 

My site's traffic has been steady, as have my click-through rates at
right around 1%.  The problem is that it got way too big way too fast...
And now, I get served a bunch of filler ads all the time...  Ebay
partners and so on.  Each adsense'ee has the option of choosing their
budget, say $50 a day.  Once that's reached, you will get no more ads
from them.  When their ad is shown on 213123 sites instead of 123, their
budget is out in 3 hours for example... And the rest of the day, your
site is serving ad council Org ads that don't pay.

And while you may be going holy cow he made a lot of money..  Still, its
less than HALF of what is was 4 months ago when it first came out...

Lot's of adwords people (the advertisers) are noticing this too...  They
can't afford to advertise on 2312434 sites.  Why pay $50 a day for your
ad that's going to get shown for an hour after midnight if you're lucky,
when you can pay me to host a regular banner for a whole month for the
same price (that's what I charge per month, $45) and get way more
impressions....  But just on one site- your strict target audience.

Once payouts drop to les than $200, I will stop serving google ads.  It
isn't worth my ad space.  

My traffic is similar to yours....

11/03 stats
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