Is the new Adsense format hurting impressions?

[heyday]

Has anyone noticed that impressions have been down since the new Adsense format started? I've noticed on my sites Adsense is only showing one or two ads in a block that normarly shows 4.

This is bad news......

heyday

[patient2all]

Yes, I noticed that too. One wide, odd appearing ad spanning the entire block.

Have too many opted out of content?

patient2all

[m0nty]

I would have thought if your clicks remain the same, having less impressions was a good thing because it will raise your CTR, raise your quality score and thus lower your costs. That's assuming you're getting the same amount of clicks, of course.

[eyeinthesky]

Yes, I'm seeing adsense revenue plunging these few days.

Now we're really squeezed - earning less from Adsense and paying more to Adwords.

Come on, MSN ...

[heyday]

Obviosly we are getting less clicks..... You can't get your ad clicked on if it doesn't show...... Before we usualy show up in the number 3 or 4 spot..... Many of the ads are only showing 1 or 2 ads in a block....

heyday

[ronmcd]

I agree, had a great first 2 weeks of August, a lot of it from content traffic, then content almost completely disappeared due to adsense changes. I can't see how google can be gaining from this change.

[moTi]

same here, great start into august.
last days were terrible.

in my logic, when only one ad shows in a 4-ads-adblock, the one ad has to be four times as attractive to visitors to click in order to get the same amount of clicks.

stats prove this isn't the case.

[petra]

Not all publishers are affected negatively. My site's earnings improved after the "changes"

[Marcia]

If you've got one of those squares with a standard of 4 ads in what they show as a "hotspot" around the middle of the page toward the top it looks HORRIBLE when only 2 ads are showing.

I'm going to either have to pull the AdSense off ALL those pages altogether (which means NO clicks) or I'll have to do a redesign on ALL the pages that have those and replace them with a 468x60. It also looks HORRIBLE when the skyscrapers show only two ads.

I run AdSense as a feature that's additional content for users - but can't have it wrecking the appearance of the pages. I love AdSense, but this is taking excessive licence with messing with the design of our pages.

[europeforvisitors]

Aren't impressions based on ad units, not individual ads?

[Alioc]

I guess that it will hopefully get better by time. It needs time for advertisers to realize that they've to get into the top 2 positions to get the same level of traffic from the content network. Overall eCPM should rise soon. Some already see this happening.

And, attention to what EfV says. It's true, so that either your traffic is decreased or that Google can't target and/or find ads to display anymore which shouldn't be the case.