My latest attempt is here :

Isn’t it a perfect combination? A nice and useful ads that blended into the design, not only can achieve good CTR, it can complement our content as well. Got the Adsense ads?

In short:

Why are we doing this?
Two reasons: first, users have the best experience when they don’t have to wait a long time for landing pages to load. Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers, and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.

And it means:

After the one month review period, this load time factor will be incorporated into your keywords’ Quality Scores. Keywords with landing pages that load very slowly may get lower Quality Scores (and thus higher minimum bids). Conversely, keywords with landing pages that load very quickly may get higher Quality Scores and lower minimum bids.

Basically the the shorter loading time, the better position and lower minimum bids you might get. May be is a good news for web hosting companies as well?? LOL

I’m wondering will this affect Adsense users eventually. Say if my site has shorter loading time, isn’t it give Adwords users a better platform to show their ads as well? Should I be rewarded as well?

Explanation from Adwords Team:

Google’s smart pricing model has always provided better placement for better performing ads, and reduced the cost of a click to the least amount possible to stay above your competitor’s ad. And now, with no change in how you bid, Google may reduce the cost for a click if that better reflects the value it brings to advertisers like you.

How smart pricing works
We are constantly analyzing data across our network, and if our data shows that a click is less likely to turn into business results (e.g. online sale, registration, phone call, newsletter sign-up), we may reduce the price you pay for that click. You may notice a reduction in the cost of clicks from content sites.

We take into account many factors such as what keywords or concepts triggered the ad, as well as the type of site on which the ad was served. For example, a click on an ad for digital cameras on a web page about photography tips may be worth less than a click on the same ad appearing next to a review of digital cameras.

Google saves you time and hassle by estimating the value of clicks and adjusting prices on an ongoing basis. With improved smart pricing, you should automatically get greater value for clicks from ad impressions across our network, all with no change in how you bid.

Explanation from Adsense Team:

1. Many factors determine the price of an ad

More than conversion rate goes into determining the price of an ad: the advertiser’s bid, the quality of the ad, the other ads competing for the space, the start or end of an ad campaign, and other advertiser fluctuations.

2. Clickthrough rate doesn’t affect advertiser return on investment (ROI)

The percentage of clicks that convert for an advertiser is the most important factor in an advertiser’s ROI, so it’s not only possible, but common, to have a low CTR and a high advertiser conversion rate. It’s also possible to have a high CTR and a low conversion rate. Don’t remove the AdSense code from your site just because it has a lower CTR – it may be one of your best converting sites.

Although Adsense Team clarified that CTR is not one of the factors that will affect the pricing, I think there is still come co-relations. Imagine if a website with all sort of traffic but none of them can convert into ads clicks, then something much be wrong, and even they can be converted into ads clicks, the sales conversion for advertiser will be low as well. For example if traffic came from low quality source, eg link farms, new blogs, MFAs, etc, and the visitors are less likely to be interested in any form of advertisement, not interested in buying anything etc. Even if webmaster manage to convert them into a valid Adsense click, advertisers will be very unlikely to convert them into any form of sales.

Apart from CTR, I think factors like

• Traffic quality(search traffic is good)
• PR of the site
• Content of the site, site relevance
• Size and age of the site

will affect how you get smart priced as well, these factors sort of become rules of google dominated internet world? I believe how your site ranked in SEs also affected by similar factors.

One important information I gathered is : smart pricing will affect the whole account, not by site, not by channel, is the whole Adsense account. So if you want to put Adsense ads into some new, not performing sites, you might want to think twice. I just removed the ads from most of my not performing sites as my earning really drop after I added Adsense to those sites. I also remove extra ads from some of my performing sites for another experiment –> to boost the CTR, and also I try not to display ads with lower bid as my visitors might click on them instead of ads with higher bid.

Hopefully I can boost the CTR in 2 months time. Anyway, I’ve removed Adsense from all not performing site except this blog, as I find that the ads are pretty relevant and useful.

After some thoughts, I found out that advertisers actually tried to exploit cheap alternatives to advertise in certain sites. For example if MYB serve both in-house contextual ads as well as Adsense, advertisers may try to bid at a lower price in Adsense and hopefully can gain the same level of exposure, clicks, etc in MYB

I decided to review all the ads and monitor the performance and will update in my blog soon.

How to check Adsense revenue from placement-targeted ads and contextual ads :
1. Go to Reports, then Advanced Reports
2. Choose your desired date range, say last 7 days
3. Select show data by : Individual Ad
4. Select the checkbox : Show data by targeting type – contextual or placement
5. Select radio button : Show Aggregate data
6. Display report

The report will then show results for both placement-targeted ads and contextual ads, from here you can decide whether to block some of the sites to increase your revenue.

How to allow/block placement-targeted ads :
1. Activate Ad Review Center under Adsense Setup
2. Review all the allowed sites(all sites are allowed by default)
*the list will take a few minutes to appear
3. Choose to allow future ads automatically or hold it for 24 hours

Hope this help

Read more at : http://www.jensense.com/archives/2007/05/google_adsense_16.html

I’ve check those MFA sites that i filtered out before, a lot of them are not displaying Adsense anymore, think google really serious about it this time. It will definitely reduce Google’s adword earning, but is something that must be done in order to keep the whole game healthy, or else advertisers will lose faith on it.

Some webmasters actually reported lower earnings since then, i’m not sure what is the impact to my sites yet as generally weekend is low earning period. I think I’ll be getting a lower earning as well if look at the current trend.

We ask that publishers not line up images and ads in a way that suggests a relationship between the images and the ads. If your visitors believe that the images and the ads are directly associated, or that the advertiser is offering the exact item found in the neighboring image, they may click the ad expecting to find something that isn’t actually being offered. That’s not a good experience for users or advertisers.

Publishers should also be careful to avoid similar implementations that people could find misleading. For instance, if your site contains a directory of Flash games, you should not format the ads to mimic the game descriptions.

What if I place a space or a line between my images and my ads? Would that work?
No. If the ads and the images appear to be associated, inserting a small space or a line between the images and ads will not make the implementation compliant.

full article : http://adsense.blogspot.com/2006/12/ad-and-image-placement-policy.html

Here is an interesting article from Forbes

The search giant’s targets are Web sites that use arbitrage to take advantage of loopholes in Google’s Adwords advertising system. Adwords allows Web sites to bid on the search terms beside which their advertisements will appear. The more demand for the search term, the more advertisers pay for each click on the ad that appears when users search for that term. The arbitrage scheme exploits that system using the basic buy low, sell high principle: A Web site arbitrageur uses a low-priced keyword to lure traffic and then redirects that traffic to another site that contains little content and is stacked with ads that earn a much higher price.

Take an example from the online market for asbestos-related cancer lawsuits. A Web page arbitrageur can buy a misspelling of mesothelioma like “mezothelioma” for just nickels per click. The arbitrageur’s ad then appears next to the results for that search term. Google users who click on the ad are led to the arbitrageur’s site, which is stocked with more lucrative ads for attorneys and cancer treatments. For those links, the arbitrageur might be paid as much as $25 per click.

AdSense background images are the hottest new way to boost your AdSense CTR. Although many believe that it violates the AdSense TOS they are dead wrong. It has been confirmed by Google to be completely safe and compliant with the AdSense TOS. The only pictures they said would violate this is ones that point to the ads or ask for them to be clicked. You will not find any of that trash here though so don’t worry.

AdSense background images make your ad’s stand out from your page and grab your visitors attention. This is a very vital part of getting the CTR you dreamed of. Although this new technique was just let out of the bag tons of AdSense marketers are rushing out to get their hands on this technology. Don’t get caught using the same old naked every day ad’s everybody else is using. Make sure your ads get seen.