Revenue dropping like crazy for past 9 days

30-40% drop

[irock]

Hmm... I noticed there's a decrease in the number of people participating this AdSense forum. Do you think it's due to the fact that there's virtually nothing we can control over our Adsense revenue?

My revenue is dropping like crazy for the past 8 days. I say 30-40% drop as 'crazy'... the other guy in this forum mentioned 90%... which is a little extreme.

[level80]

>>Those of you seeing a recent drop in Adsense revenue >>aren't attributing it to Google having turned off the "on >>the fly" serving of applicable ads?

>Could you please explain what you mean by this? I'm at a >loss.

He means applicable ads being shown on every page instantly - without a delay. Question number 5 on the Google Adsense FAQ also goes some way to answer it:-

Q. How quickly will Google AdWords™ ads start appearing on my site?

After being accepted to the program and successfully pasting the AdSense HTML ad code into your web pages, ads will start running on your site within minutes. If your site is not yet in our index, it may take up to few hours or more before we are able to crawl your site. Until we are able to crawl your site, we may display public service ads or your specified Alternate Ads, for which you will not accrue any AdSense earnings.

Publishers have sole responsibility for the operation and maintenance of their sites. Google shall not be responsible in the event that the AdSense HTML ad code is implemented incorrectly or we are technically unable to serve ads on a site.

[bean5403]

>>Those of you seeing a recent drop in Adsense revenue aren't attributing it to Google having turned off the "on the fly" serving of applicable ads?

>Could you please explain what you mean by this? I'm at a loss.

For example, before this past week, if I was putting Adsense on a new page on my site, and previewed the page in my browser before uploading it, I would see an Adsense ad that matched the contents of the new page (which wasn't even live yet). Apparently Google disabled that feature. Now I see PSAs. By the same token, now that the feature has been disabled, if I put that new page online, the first time the page is viewed, the viewer sees PSAs. Then the mediabot comes out to read the page. The next time the page is viewed, the viewer sees a more targeted ad.

I'm testing to see if the 3rd time it's viewed it gets more targeted, wondering if the 2nd time around the viewer gets something generally targeted to the site's topic, while the 3rd time the viewer gets something specific to that particular page. (Anyone seeing ads get more targeted with subsequent viewings?)

[tomparis]

I get very poor %conversion from google ads.

My best %conversion is from yahoo, through overture,
but they are very expensive.

Try using 2nd tier and 3rd tier ppc engines.

<snip>

I have found the best to be the top 5

Overture
Findwhat
Kanoodle
Sprinks
7Search

[edited by: Jenstar at 6:01 am (utc) on Oct. 30, 2003]
[edit reason] Promo URLs against TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Chndru]

URL postings are not allowed, tomparis.
In that case, you can see that the site you mentioned runs Adsense.
'enuff said.

[robho]

Those of you seeing a recent drop in Adsense revenue aren't attributing it to Google having turned off the "on the fly" serving of applicable ads?

No change in my proportion of alternate ads served on both the 22nd and the 28th (11% in both cases on thousands of dynamic pages, 6% on a single static page).

My EPC and RPM started dropping on Oct 13th (so not a month end thing) and has settled down for nearly two weeks to a figure 25-30% lower than the previous 8 weeks. Similar ads, similar proportion of PSA, similar traffic.

Presumably (assuming the Google share is unchanged) the advertisers in my sector aren't fighting so much over the space anymore.

[level80]

You haven't mentioned what happened to your CPC and the clickthrough rate. A redesign of the site - different colours - lots of things affect the clickthrough rate which would affect the EPC and RPM.

[morpheus83]

I think the drop in revenue is because of big names serving up adsense ads. Like cnet, indiatimes, nasdaq etc. They suck up all the advertisments due to the high volume of traffic they get. My revenue has dropped by 60% since the last 15 days.

[robho]

You haven't mentioned what happened to your CPC and the clickthrough rate.

The drop in EPC is with a site layout and ad format unchanged for a couple of months. Slight but not major drop in CTR rate since "ads by google" became invisible last week.

Another reason could be visitors tired of seeing the same ads, although my proportion of repeat visitors is fairly low.

Yesterday was considerably below even these recent poor weeks, so I won't be bothering with trying to optimize Adsense any more, it's close to the point where it'll only be usuable as a filler.

[europeforvisitors]

I think the drop in revenue is because of big names serving up adsense ads. Like cnet, indiatimes, nasdaq etc. They suck up all the advertisments due to the high volume of traffic they get.

That may be true of some topics, but not all. Remember, we aren't talking about run-of-network banner inventory--we're discussing targeted text ads, which are served according to what Google finds on your pages. The more editorial diversity you have on your site, the less you'll be affected by competition for the most popular keyphrases.

[morpheus83]

Yes europeforvisitors I agree with you regd targeted ads and content. But whatever audience you serve there is a big name in the market serving the same content.

[europeforvisitors]

Yes europeforvisitors I agree with you regd targeted ads and content. But whatever audience you serve there is a big name in the market serving the same content.

Not necessarily. Take my topic of European travel as an example: There may be any number of big sites that cover travel in Europe (everything from destination sites to travel sections of papers like THE WASHINGTON POST or USA TODAY), but they don't necessarily cover all of the the subtopics that I do. Just as important, many of their articles probably won't stay online indefinitely, while mine will. So, even if a major newspaper or travel magazine does cover (for example) a French river cruise or a certain luxury hotel in Venice, its article and mine aren't likely to be competing for eyeballs and clicks indefinitely.

BTW, it would be interesting if one could compare AdSense clickthrough rates for a highly targeted site and a general news and entertainment site. I'd expect my CTR to be higher just because I'm serving a more targeted audience. (To put it another way, the WASHINGTON POST Travel Section reader may be as interested in Disney World or a Caribbean vacation as in European travel, while my typical reader is likely to have a strong interest in the latter.)

[level80]

"BTW, it would be interesting if one could compare AdSense clickthrough rates for a highly targeted site and a general news and entertainment site."

Interesting yes - but probably against one of Google Adsense's myriad program policies, terms and conditions or something else!

[europeforvisitors]

True. I was merely speaking hypothetically. I don't think THE WASHINGTON POST is going to share that kind of information even without Google's TOS. :-)

[cyberprosper]

supply>demand = less money for us.

[jranes]

This is getting to be like the economy for the last four years. Where is the bottom?

[jranes]

I have to say too that the sites I see my ads running on out there are getting less and less targeted from bigger sites running the ads. I would take my ads on sites with lower production quality and higher targeted customers over some of these big spoons that have hit the bowl of soup lately. Seems they are sucking up the broth for publishers and small niche targeted advertisers as well.

[linear]

Well, I've had five consecutive days over my monthly average. I see no decline at all in my CTR or EPC. I am a good example of what europeforvisitors referred to as

editorial diversity

(Which makes it sound a lot cooler that "all kinds of different junk.")

[Robsp]

As an advertizer I throw in my 2 cts. I think that a drop in adsense revenue may also be related to the recent introduction of conversion tracking in Adwords a few weeks ago. We stopped content targetted ads this week after evaluating the ROI for 3 weeks and it was way way lower than searches (and not profitable) so we stopped the content ads. This may be true for other advertizers as well.

[jranes]

Well with all the non targeted sites jumping into the game I have to agree with you Robsp. I am an advertiser and publisher and when the network ads were mostly coming off niche sites they were great. But I am getting syndication refers now from sites that don't relate to my site at all besides some "editorial diversity" and I can't see how these will convert to my satisfaction.

[chiyo]

Just to show the other side to Robsp and jranes, we have found the opposite. in 90% of campaigns the contextual ads have much better ROI than SE ads.

We think this may have something to do with the nature of our products and services which are non consumer and 100% btob, non-impulse, and high cost. which are a bit diff to the usual PPC fare.

[jranes]

My problem is that the ads are being run in places that are so untargeted that the whole program is starting to feel really dirty to me. I don't want to advert on it and I don't really feel as comfortable running the ads on my targeted sites. It is a low point in my understanding of what G is about.

[europeforvisitors]

But I am getting syndication refers now from sites that don't relate to my site at all besides some "editorial diversity" and I can't see how these will convert to my satisfaction.

IMHO, you should be thinking about the *pages* that referrals are coming from, not the sites. Readers of content sites are often visitors who arrive on inside pages through search. If you're selling saints' relics and you get a referral from Leisure-travel-fun-in-Italy.com, don't assume that the referral isn't a hot prospect. That reader may well be someone who searched for saints' relics in Google and found the page on the leisure-travel site where he saw your ad.

Bottom line: Don't assume; test. And if you aren't happy with the test results, tell Google that you want the ability to choose the sites where your ads for saints' relics will appear. :-)

[jranes]

That is very true europeforvisitors, especially considering that not all generic topic sites are created equal. Some of them I would pay a premium to be on, others I wouldn't even want them to pay me to be there. It isn't a matter of production quality or even amount of traffic of the referer, it is the level of attention that is put into each page that refers at the end of the day and some sites do a great job of this and others are just not that type of site. Say a site with almost all pictures that people have posted to the web, how can their content really be qualifing my refers, IMHO they can't and I'm sick of paying them. I'll send out that email to google tonight.