Over the last couple months I decided to test out this so-called "Smart Pricing" that Google mentions and publishers always blame their poor performance on.
What Smart Pricing is, in a nutshell, is a way to label your account as a high performer, low performer or anywhere in the middle. If you have channels that earn nothing, or have very low eCPM or CTR, it can mark your entire account as less valuable for advertisers to advertise on, so your ad spaces are worth less, and you, thereby, earn less.
I use OpenX for my ad serving, and set up my account to fall back to OpenX Network ads if somebody is bidding more than AdSense is paying me. At the end of each month (or more frequently if I have the time) I run a report for each ad slot to see what AdSense is paying me and reset my OpenX CPM for backfill ads accordingly.
The method by which I started testing was analyzing my AdSense ad spaces and find the worst performing channels. The lowest performing (some were pathetic), I simply removed AdSense from the filled them with Amazon, eBay or OpenX Network ads.
Google claims they recalculate Smart Pricing figures once a week...and, much to my surprise about a week later my earnings started climbing, even with less AdSense appearing. Figuring it to be a fluke I just left it alone for a few weeks and revenue plateaued a little higher than my previous average, and did so with fewer impressions.
So again, I went thru the process of eliminating the last of my very weakly performing channels, and the same cycle occurred. Rising revenue on few impressions. My reported CTR and eCPM has risen substantially, I am making almost double what I was just 8-10 weeks ago, and I have much more ad space freed up for other ads for affiliate programs, eBay auctions and other such ads.
My recommendation is, if you have a few ad channels that are not making you anything, or much, drop the channel and see what happens, it has certainly paid off for me!
