Google financials show it is shifting revenue from its partner media sites

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The reason it is shifting is...: ...that the authenticity of the traffic is lousy from the partner sites. With the exception of a very few, very large partner sites (such as NYT, as you mentioned), the performance of the CPM model of AdSense was completely lousy.

I, for one, had an experience whereby I bought some ads on very targeted partner sites. They told me that a click-through ratio below .5 percent would be a failure. What I received was .01 percent. Yes, that is NINETY EIGHT PERCENT BELOW what they thought would be a failure. This is despite being on super-targeted sites for my niche and having what I thought was a pretty compelling ad. The only explanation for this is that most Ad Sense sites are either generating false impressions, or they are burying the ad so deep that nobody could ever notice it.

I was paying roughly $5 per thousand impressions, and that equates to a $50 PER CLICK cost. Why would I continue paying that when I can pay a tiny fraction of that on a PPC basis with Google's properties? CPM is so dead. Unfortunately, that is not the only CPM horror story. I will never use that model again.

Mark Brandon
Sustainable Log - News and Views for Socially Responsible Investors
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