Beware of Crappy Doubleclick Ads Served At Night

[bimo]

I couldn't sleep, so I got up early (5AM PDST) and checked my stats.
A top-performing page had the lowest CTR ever witnessed.
So I checked the ads. All from doubleclick.

One ad's text - High Blood Pressure Symptoms Check - Your Symptoms Online.
I visited the page by typing in the URL. The words "blood pressure" COULD NOT BE FOUND ON THE PAGE! So I sent theallergyreliefcenter.com straight to the bit bucket (competitive filter). Bye-bye forever. There was another lousy ad from blogspot - also banished forever.

After optimizing my content for over 5 years, I have learned one thing for sure. After you have optimized the heck out of your page, your CTR is determined by THE ADS THAT GOOGLE SERVES YOU.

My CTR has been dropping across the board. I believe that this is because the ads that are being served are not as good as they used to be. What with the doubleclick integration, interest-based ads, and "approved 3rd party" crappy ads, your CTR is going to suffer. YOU can only do so much to optimize your CTR, then Google must serve you good ads.

As the ads get worse, it makes me wonder about just how much I want to continue doing this. The law of diminishing returns is raising its ugly head. How much time do I want to spend playing with the "competitive filter"? None. It is time to replot my course. Fighting the tide is not that much fun. I would rather just create content.

As an old friend used to say, "The problem with life is figuring out what to do next". That's where I am at now.

[Spiral]

I think people sometimes forget that Adsense/AdWords is a bid system.

The world economy has shrunk and this has impacted ad revenue. There are less people bidding on the same number of keywords, so CPC has decreased.

It's understandable that AdSense revenue has decreased along with all other economic revenue. AdSense is one of 5 internet income streams I have, and I can say that the decrease in AdSense revenue is pretty proportional when compared to the decrease in my other revenue streams.

You can't expect to get the same CPC that you were getting a year or more ago. That's like the local jewelry store expecting to sell the same number of diamond rings this month, that they sold 12 months ago. It's not a reasonable assumption or expectation in this economic climate.