Why the wild variation in CPC rates

[mediaspree]

I understand its a bidded system and I know I am not supposed to discuss revenues in public forums so lets use an average case. This has nothing to do with my actual revenue.

One day anysite.com which has only one page with adsense, gets 2 clicks and makes 6 cents.

The next day anysite.com gets two clicks and makes $3.50. The content of the site has not changed.

Now Most days "anysite" gets the 3 cent types some random days the $3.50 types of click show up.

Is google making a mistake in their calculations? Are they going to dock anysite.com at the end of the month for money they may have miscalculated?

And isn't in both google and anysites best interest to always show the 3.50 type clicks prominently and everyday?

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Any number of factors, only hypotheticals:

1) A number of new players enter the market, driving up prices on a particular keyword temporarily. They don't like the results, leave, and back to the little fish again.

2) Clicks at different times of day, some of which were early enough to catch the high priced clicks which used up their daily budgets.

3) 4 ind ads (In traditional 1 ad unit) on a page, only 2 of them high priced, the other two are exponentially lower. Not all 4 ads have to be the same cost.

etc. etc. etc.

-Allan

I understand its a bidded system and I know I am not supposed to discuss revenues in public forums so lets use an average case. This has nothing to do with my actual revenue.

One day anysite.com which has only one page with adsense, gets 2 clicks and makes 6 cents.

The next day anysite.com gets two clicks and makes $3.50. The content of the site has not changed.

Now Most days "anysite" gets the 3 cent types some random days the $3.50 types of click show up.

Is google making a mistake in their calculations? Are they going to dock anysite.com at the end of the month for money they may have miscalculated?

And isn't in both google and anysites best interest to always show the 3.50 type clicks prominently and everyday?

 

[RJ]

Allan's exactly right. Hypthetically, when you show a Adsense leaderboard or skyscraper sized ad with four text ads showing, it could have one ad that pays over $3 when clicked and three ads that pay less than $.10 per click.

Also, keep in mind advertisers have budgets. If there are 10,000 Adsense publishers it's not unreasonable to expect that certain advertisers will quickly use up their daily or monthly budgets.

 

[mediaspree]

Thanks for the replies :D