Forum Moderators: martinibuster
ASA seems to be implying that no glitch exists. But, given that multiple people are are reporting a similar, and substantial, CPM decrease, SOMETHING is going on. How is your CPM this week as compared to last month? If down, does it vary across channels, or it is evenly down?
The extreme drop various Adsensers have noticed is inconsistent with the idea of an end-of-month budget bust. The huge drop started over a week ago, which is closer to the middle of the month than the end. This isn't "lack of business as usual."
OK, but it isn't across the board. (I'm actually doing better this month than I did in September, and the last few days have been above the month's average. As always, your mileage or eCPM may vary, and when one person is up on the seesaw, there's a pretty good chance that someone else will be down--or vice versa.)
OK, but it isn't across the board. (I'm actually doing better this month than I did in September...)
If something goofy is happening with AdSense, it isn't affecting everyone, so the logical question to ask yourself is "Why me?"
Suggestion: Tell us what kind of site you have, how you use AdSense ads, etc., and maybe a pattern will emerge.
Does this have anything to do with the sinking US dollar (& economy?)? I'm in Canada and 100% of my website earnings come through in US dollars. So as the US economy tanks, so does my revenue. The Canadian economy is quite strong right now... I can't help but wonder if the US economy is the root cause...
Now my income for October it trucking along quite well, there has been no drop at all. As a result I (and many others who are ok) won't normally look at this thread nor bother to post into it.
So the posts here come from a sample where people HAVE lost money. But every month some people will lose money, that seems to be how it works round here, so there will always be some people to add to the thread.
As its a self selecting sample it holds no validity to general trends, so all you can say is that *you* have lost income over the month. Thats all.
Next month when you don't lose money you won't participate in the next iteration of this thread, and others will. Enough people will pass through to make it look all doom and gloom, yet in reality it may not be so. This is a form of collective navel gazing.
However, as there are no independent ways to validate Adsense data, discussion on individual observations should be encouraged, not belittled.
Because there are not too many people who call webmaster their profession, the stronger the noise in WW on individual Adsense observations becomes, the more I find it useful to further examine the matter.
The discussion on individual observations shouldn't be confused with proof either way.
The trouble with these threads is that they are so unscientific that to draw any conclusions as to general trends is farcical.
I'd agree if I hadn't come here looking to see if others were having a problem.
I think it would be helpful if members would clarify if they're making less in October 2007 versus October 2006, instead of comparing this October versus September 2007 or the last three months or six months. It's a more meaningful metric.
I'm not discounting anyone's experience, I respect those who are posting that their eCPM is less this month over the past month etc. However, it may be more illuminating if we compare apples to apples. Fwiw, I'm doing better this month over October 2006, although I also have a dramatically lower eCPM this month over last month.
Good thread.
At 40% revenue loss YoY, September was even worse, though. I am still suspecting a money grab from Google (see my thread [webmasterworld.com...] ).
Well, given the transparency of the blackbox called Google Adsense, we will probably never figure out what went wrong.
My earnings for October 2007 are 34% below that of October 2006.
Out of interest how does October's traffic compare with last October?
The past 7 days is a little worse with both my eCPM and actual earnings at -33%.
My traffic has been completely stable, my actual clicks and CTR are down a little but mostly within their usual range.
I had to write to the G AdSense team in June complaining of a similar ridiculous drop in EPC/eCPM and "miraculously" a couple of weeks later it reverted to its average.
Overnight ALL advertisers do not suddenly increase their spend by 50% nor decrease it by 33%. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs their bumps feeling and get a grip on the real world of business.
Comparing to 2005 and 2006 my October daily earnings were all within 90% of the median average with the lowest to highest days not more -22% to +30% from that average with those lows and highs only happening not more than ONE day in that month, in other words, my normal average that I keep quoting.
The last three days I have seen -40%, -50% and -40%. It is clearly evident that "for some of us" that something is wrong/broken/fubar.
Such is the nature of my widget industry I personally know many of my advertisers and I have telephoned them to ask if they have reduced their CPC and their 100% response has been "NO"!
Obviously someone, somewhere is benefitting from this continued ad spend, certainly not me, and G's continued silence/denial that some of us have a problem, infuriates me to the point of alienation.
If I treated any of my customers like this then understandably they would go elsewhere however many of us know that G has us by the short and curlies since we (outside of the USA) have no viable textual alternative, at the moment.
PS: I bet many people going through the same unusual earning drops, including old WW members, are not posting their issues is because they are afraid of people criticizing them for over reacting since some people believe that since it's no happening to them, then is no happening, which is a egocentric way of seeing things.
Out of interest how does October's traffic compare with last October?
October 2006 8694 unique visitors
October 2007 18715 unique visitors (so far)
i might also add that the traffic sources haven't altered, keyword searches are well on target and advertisers are pretty much the same as last year with the exception of a few newbies.
[edited by: Scurramunga at 12:47 pm (utc) on Oct. 29, 2007]
I just realized that after approximating that Scurramunga seems to have some 70% Adsense revenue drop per visitor from last year.
That reminds me that for many European publishers the strengthening EUR, up some 12% in value against dollar from last year, has also made a dent on take-home revenues.
Traffic is up 37%
Clicks up by 54%
CTR up by under 1%
eCPM up by under 1%
Earning up by 19%
You can see that my traffic and clicks have really improved a lot, but my earning increases have not kept up.
This is frustrating. In the real world, my hard work to build content and improve my traffic has equaled a proportional increase in earnings through sales of my products and affiliate sales. In the Adsense world, my hard work to improve my traffic has never increased earnings proportionally. As a matter of fact, a lot of times my earnings actually decrease.
Adsense has been a great way to earn money from all the work I've done on an old site, but I'm making more from my own products and affiliate sales now. And since those two things respond directly and proportionally to my hard work and Adsense does not, I'll take Adsense off my site in the eventually.
What will finally push me out of Adsense will be a combination of the frustration of no real world control, the sense that the ads make the site look less professional, and the lack of decent money through them. It's a delicate balance and it's tipping away from Adsense.
Traffic up
EPC: 53% up
eCPM: 45% up
So drops aren't across the board.
I think threads like this do exagerate how widespread the problem is - since you tend to be more motivated to log on, post, and worry about what's happening, when eCPM is dropping - when it's rising, it's easy to just shut up and enjoy it!
Sept - I made $500 from 1000 click and 10000 uniq user
Oct - So far I made $470 from 1500 click 15000 uniq user
Am I missing something here?
The sad thing with this paranoid thought is that if I were running Google and responsible to shareholders at their stratospheric valuation, I'd have a hard time justifying pay-outs to content partners in excesss of what was absolutely necessary to keep them on board. Obviously, I'm not in favor of Google paying us as little as possible, but given the lack of competition from other content advertising networks, they don't need to work very hard to keep us. It could well be they paid a premium during the content network build-out, and are starting to reap the benefits now that they have ample publisher inventory.
If they were to start ratcheting down the payouts, it also makes sense that publishers would see random appearing results because they would want to do extensive A/B testing with control groups to be able to judge the effects of lower payouts. I don't think they are concerned about "public" reaction, they have the right to pay what they want for our hosting ads, and we have limited options unless we want to establish ad sales departments and go direct. But a gradual roll out of an algorithim to SmartPrice publishers with the goal of maximizing Google revenue rather than minimizing advertiser costs strikes me as an inevitable result of their business model.
I just can't believe that somebody at Google picked a figure they thought would be "fair" for publisher share on the content network and has stuck with it for the past three years. That really wouldn't make any sense.
Ouch, I think I just talked myself into believing it.
Ouch, I think I just talked myself into believing it.
Lol...to say the very least it makes more sense than anything else at the moment!
It would be an incredibly naive move by G to do this since I AM at the point of removing AdSEnse completely. I am fortunate, I do not rely on them one cent for my livelihood however when push comes to shove they've chosen the wrong person with me.
1) Contrary to assertions that have been made here, this is not a new topic. Anyone who's been reading this forum since 2003, and who has a good memory, will have a feeling of deja vu every time a thread like this one comes along.
2) Comparing "same month to same month" (e.g., Oct. 2007 to Oct. 2006) may be useful, but it isn't as useful as it would be if there were no other variables. Sites grow, traffic sources change, and the AdSense program itself evolves (see point 3 below).
3) For a while now, advertisers have had an unlimited domain filter. More recently, Google started giving advertisers data on traffic from individual sites via "Placement Reports." Inevitibly, these new advertiser tools (along with the forthcoming site-targeted contextual ads) will tend to help some publishers and hurt others.
4) Unhappy publishers are always claiming that "Google has cut the payout," citing their own lower earnings as proof. That argument might make sense if all publishers were seeing lower earnings, but that isn't the case, and Google's quarterly earnings reports show that the overall payout to AdSense partners is constant (within a percentage point or so) from quarter to quarter.
5) The overall Google-publisher revenue split may be only one factor in how earnings are allocated. Google's compensation formula (not to be confused with "smart pricing," which is a discount for advertisers) may not be as simple as a straight percentage split across the board. Google may well feel, for example, that sites with original content deserve a bigger split than ODP clones do, or that sites that meet certain quality criteria (based on bounce rate, etc.) deserve a bigger share. We just don't know.
6) AdSense is an auction-based marketplace, so volatility shouldn't come as a surprise. If the value of your stock portfolio drops, do you accuse the New York Stock Exchange of maniplating the numbers on the Big Board? No; you wait for the market to improve, or you cut your losses by shifting assets into bonds, money-market funds, gold bullion, real estate, or something else.
7) Finally--and most important--you need to remember that the number of pages with AdSense is likely to be growing at least as quickly (and perhaps faster) than advertisers' expenditures on AdSense ads. New publishers join the network all the time, and existing publishers keep churning out pages. This dilution effect (a.k.a. the "more but smaller slices of the pie effect") doesn't bode well for publishers who rely solely on AdSense for their advertising revenue.
The issue for me was the direct corelation between my plunging eCPM and the quirky channel reporting. When the reporting was starting to get flakey, my eCPM was going down slightly - when the reporting was flat out broken, I was hitting the lowest eCPM in a long time.
It is still early in the day, but funny enough, now that the reporting seems fixed, my eCPM is going back to what I would consider 'normal' levels. Anyone notice a comeback?
Anyone notice a comeback?
Quite the contrary, my EPC therefore eCPM is now -65% compared to my year and early October average.
We're not waiting until 31st October now, AdSense is being removed as I write.
Wait, don't remove it until I get a chance to sell my shares in Google.
Too late...gone...I feel much better now:-)
Another variable is the HAYDAY factor, I think some people might forget that is common in every business.
I used to manage a furniture store, first few years double futon was 200 or more, by third year there were 15 new competitors and no one was selling for more than 169.99 or so.
Before that I had a leather business. Remember Eel skin wallets? First couple years i could get 40 for a mens wallet, by year 3 down to 25.
In both cases while the retail price dropped the manufacturer costs/wholesale prices rose.
Just some things to consider. Obviously each niche will see its own unique turbulence.
Obviously each niche will see its own unique turbulence.
I have spoken directly with many of my advertisers since they are friends too and they have NOT changed their CPC.
Me and several others are clearly getting totally hammered for something WE have not done!
G needs to tell me/us what is going on.
My ads have all been removed and until I get a reasonable explanation to my queries, that's the way it will stay.
This is forcing us to now implement our own direct textual advertising service. I doubt our hundred+ thousand Dollars per annum will ever be noticed however if quite a few hundred AdSensers get screwed like this then that could be the start of a mass exodus.
They need to tell us what they have done to slaughter our sites in such a way, just why is my EPC and eCPM worth less than 40% of what's it has been all year, except for the June period when I had to scream at them loudly and the "norm" was restored.
