Thanks to Stuart for alerting me to this report into keyword prices on contextual ad systems titled – Are Internet Ad Prices Slipping?
The figures are from a semi regular (quarterly or monthly?) report from Fathom Online (see their 7 Nov press release) into what keyword prices are doing in different industries. You’ll see from the following image that most industries saw falls in October, the exceptions being Travel/Hospitality (14% increase), Finance/investing (4% increase) and Wireless (no change).
The decrease of 6% in the Consumer Retail area could explain some of the recent decreases that I’ve seen in Adsense earnings.
So is the bottom falling out of the market? I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion just yet – for one I seem to remember this time last year click values decreased before some pretty nice increases in the two months leading up to Christmas. I’ve illustrated this below showing the shape (no actual figures) of my click values for one of my blogs. You’ll see a bit of a dip in the cpc
Perhaps what we’re seeing here is a lull before the storm. It could also be a reaction to some new contextual ad systems entering the market (like YPN and MSN’s options).
I wouldn’t be panicking and jumping off the contextual advertising bandwagon yet.
Cost per click on one of my blogs with last October highlighted (figures deleted to comply Adsense rules).
