Sapdup Blogging about SAP

SAP Firms Doing it Tough During the Recession?

I run a number of websites on a fairly casual basis, sharing by knowledge in some areas with internet users in general.  As you'll see from this site, I use Google Adsense to try and recoup some of the expenses of running the sites.

Yesterday I decided to do a bit of analysis.  Sapdup, despite it's relatively low volume of visitors used to be a 'cash cow' for me, and in recent months I have noticed a significant decrease in revenue for this site.  So I set out to take a better look at the numbers.

In the six months from 19th of October 2007 untill 19th of March 2008, this site had a clickthrough rate of 1.69%.  This may seem low, but is actually very high compared to my other sites (my blog got 0.15% during the same period).  During this period, the ePCM (cost per thousand impressions) on sapdup was $11.88.  Again, this is very high compared to my blog which got $0.32.

In the last six months, the clickthrough rate for sapdup has dropped to 0.68% (perhaps reflecting a reduced interest in training, new products, consulting etc) and the ePCM has dropped to $2.64.  $2.64 is still good, but adjusted for the decrease in clickthrough rate (59.8%) this is still a drop in the cost of advertising here at sapdup of 18%.

Since the price paid for google ads is based on an auction system, we can assume that this drop is entirely due to either there being less parties interested in buying SAP related advertising, their available budgets being cut, or both.

So is the SAP industry feeling the same pain the rest of the world is?  My data isn't exactly a rock solid indication, but my answer would certainly be 'yes'.