Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Page impressions -3.05%
Clicks -16.40%
CTR -13.76%
eCPM -38.95%
Average daily earnings -40.82%
For those AFFECTED, are yours similar, better or worse?
Oh and Google still haven't replied to my email I sent them a month ago! *#@!s!
Oh and Google still haven't replied to my email I sent them a month ago!
Perchance did you send it on a weekend?
I did and they had a completely different canned response. When ASA saw my complaint about non-responses I sent him my details and they came back within 24 hrs also saying they would be changing the weekend's canned response message.
also saying they would be changing the weekend's canned response message
(Fog appears, and a booming voice can be heard. It has an artificial sound, hollow and quite metallic.)
VOICE
Dear publisher,
thank you for your message to Adsense support concerning your shrinking revenues.
We at Google understand your concerns and take them seeriously. Also, please be assured that we appreciate any and all comments from our partners.
However, we would kindly ask you to re-send your message during a weekday between 9am and 5pm (PST) if you actually want the message to be read and interpreted by one of our customer service bots who are ultimately responsible for sending a contextual reply for your inquiry.
Thank you very much for complying, and happy googling!
Elisa
Customer Service Representative
Google Inc., Mountain View, CA
(Fog disappears, and you realize you are still sitting in front of your computer.)
We increased click volume by 30% via extra units that we ignored doing in the past out of taste concerns and saw less then a 1% increase in income.
We added cpa and brought in 25% more income per month with cpa to only watch our regular side earnings drop by exactly 25%.
Its as if someone sat down, looked at our account and said.
Give these guys 60% of what they used to make and that is it. You cannot make more no matter what you do. All extra units have been removed now since they make zero difference seemingly.
Give these guys 60% of what they used to make and that is it. You cannot make more no matter what you do.
I guess that the Google payout algo has basically three input parameters, and several output parameters depending on this.
Input parameters:
- Longterm target eCPM (average)
- Target date for longterm target eCPM to be reached
- Traffic estimate for the next day
Result:
- Actual eCPM for the next day
The actual payout for the next day then depends on real pageviews and/or clicks so far. This is required as publishers may check earnings at any given time. (It may be desired to present "progress" to them, also suggesting that payouts are actually linked to clicks and bids instead of a fixed, pre-determined eCPM).
As always, this is just a theory that might be utterly wrong.
Should we all be sharing the same experience so suddenly? That is perhaps another issue which may relate to an earlier roll-out than advertised of the "clickable area" policy and other possible scenarios mentioned in previous posts.
Either way, like all others in business, the need for diversification in income streams becomes all the more important. The question is whether others are experiencing declines in other forms of ad income, IMHO.
Publicly traded companies are also subject to the pressures of larger investors, and most of us work for the very rich in the U.S. and A., which the movie Borat mocked (and an experience which we largely associated with "Banana republics" previously). As the character Borat pointed out, the joke may be on us...
This is a country that claims to be against "entitlements" (no matter how small the % of budget), but which expects them anyway collectively. Those who are truly capitalists should not be worried by this fluctuation.
This is a country that claims to be against "entitlements" (no matter how small the % of budget), but which expects them anyway collectively. Those who are truly capitalists should not be worried by this fluctuation.
If we study other media (not just our own sites or those of people who share our problems), we can see that year-to-year drops in revenue aren't anything new. For example, according to an ADVERTISING AGE report on the top 300 magazines, FORTUNE had a revenue drop of more than 32% from 2004-205, even though circulation was down only about 3%. And MONEY lost 46.4% of its advertising revenue even though paid circulation grew by 3.6%. Did the publishers of FORTUNE and MONEY accuse their ad reps of pocketing a bigger share of the revenues? I doubt it. They may have been unhappy or angry, but they probably analyzed the state of the market, tried to figure out what problems existed on their own turf, and looked for solutions closer to home.
This is required as publishers may check earnings at any given time.
I don't think they care about that. Up until recently, a single check around supper would be enough to tell us how much we would earn on a day. For example, $30 at lunch, $60 at supper, $90 for the day. Numbers were remarkably consistent, and we never saw anything ressembling the "click dumps" other publishers talk about.
Since things went south, checking during the day means nothing. Now we can have $40 at supper and $43.60 for the day, or $35 at lunch and $40 at supper. Some days are more normal than others in terms of patterns, but nothing like the previous 48 months or so of history we had with them. However the day runs, the 60% cap comes clunking down before beddy-bye at the plex.
Advertising is one of the first areas to be hit when there is a recession...
But online advertising is growing quarter after quarter, year after year in US, in UK, worldwide.
But online advertising is growing quarter after quarter, year after year in US, in UK, worldwide.
Yes, but certain types of advertising are growing faster than others (display ads are growing faster than text ads, for example), and one sector can be down while another is up.
However, my CPM ads through ValueClick - which run on virtually every page the AS ads run, came in as an all-time record for one month.
As far as the "cap" theory is concerned, I'm of the mind that they may cap some sites. I'm pretty sure my daily earnings are capped as I've seen great numbers early on some days only to get hit with a load of .02 clicks for the last 6 hours of the day.
My basic argument with G is that they have always been so secretive about everything, especially how we are compensated. Now that I'm embroiled in this stupid "your IRS TIN records don't match ours" dispute, I'm about ready to keel over from disgust and tell them, "well, since you and the IRS have a problem with MY records, why don't you and the IRS figure it out and get back to me."
Working with Google has been good and bad, but recently it's becoming more of a hassle than it's worth, especially if they're going to cozy up with with the oh-so-friendly IRS.
Selling one's own space is becoming an increasingly attractive proposition. I've already done it to some extent and the money is much better than what I'd make with AS.
Of course, Google wants everyone who sells their own ads to use nofollow tags.... yeah, sure.
- Impressions stayed the same
- CTR -30%
- eCPM -30%
- Overall daily earnings -50%
It's becoming ridiculous.
FWIW, affiliate bookings have also been running a bit slower than in November of last year--possibly because of all the negative publicity about the weak U.S. dollar, which could be discouraging (or at least potentially discouraging) to nearly half of my audience. In any case, I suspect that external factors are more important than anything Google has been doing lately, at least for my site.
The result is that overall net revenue from all ad sources in Oct. was about 20% over the previous year. November will also be well ahead of the previous year, even though AdSpace is still feeling a little woozy CTRwise.
I have found that taking one avail away from AdSense and allocating it to another network doesn't have much effect on AdSense earnings. Higher-bid ads fill the space available and the lower-bid ads don't see the light of day. The freed-up space can be assigned to ADSDAQ, which lets publishers set a minimum acceptable eCPM.
We are fortunate in that our primary site covers several major categories, so that if travel is soft, personal finance may not be, and so forth.
The key, IMHO, is to produce a steady stream of new content, which creates more inventory that your ad networks can sell and attracts new traffic each day.
I realize that there may not be as many ad networks available in the UK or elsewhere. Thus my comments apply only to the U.S. ad market.
Yes, but certain types of advertising are growing faster than others (display ads are growing faster than text ads, for example),
LOL, HTF do you know that for a fact!
[edited by: Web_speed at 12:31 pm (utc) on Nov. 27, 2007]
On Monday I had 37% more G Page Impressions as Sunday (completely normal for me) plus I had within a couple of clicks the same quantity of clicks.
My EPC stayed the same consequently my CTR and eCPM were back to post-Glitch levels.
What? A Monday with precisely the same level of earnings as a Sunday! I have NEVER, EVER seen that before.
Needless to say my logs look completely normal for the time of year, just what is going on?
Surely there are not that many rogue bots around?
LOL, HTF do you know that for a fact!
I know that it's what the big research firms like Forrester are saying. (See this WALL STREET JOURNAL article [online.wsj.com] from 2006 for a quick overview.) If you want to argue about whether display ad sales are growing faster than text-ad sales, argue with the research firms, not with me.
Also, the IAB's statistics for 2006 show that display ads increased their market share over 2005, while "keyword search ads" declined.
I'm a bit surprised by all this ruckus.
Wait until someone chops your earnings by 40% and see if you do not squeal! There are many here whose earnings/businesses have seen reductions in the USD X,000.00 range, some maybe even more in the USD XX,000.00 area.
Now just let us know which sector you are in and we'll all come and join you:-))
Come on google do something!
If the income continue to drop i may consider taking adsense away from my web sites.
If the income continue to drop i may consider taking adsense away from my web sites.
Our ecpm is down by 60%. I just discussed with my partner that Google obviously wants us out. They do not close our account, but they want us out.
Uptime = Ok
Code = Ok
Impressions = the same
Clicks = the same...
my earnings have been cut to the 30%... I don't like it...
My income might buy me a loaf of bread and a package of hamburger meat...with maybe a tomato to slice on it, but not the mayonaise, LOL
I am busy changing over to YPN on my largest site and they are already beating Google hands down with less clicks, lower ecpm and ctr but beating them on the income end of it with highe payout per click. pretty much even PVs except that Google still has the prime real estate.
I have been slowly testing the waters and I can tell you that so far I like this swimming pool!
Going to keep adsense on my two smaller sites as I hope they will turn around but that may just be wishful thinking.
Ah Well,
Ann
If they want us out then why are they still accepting these new sites with barely any traffic?
Because a new publisher might or might not perform well for Google and its advertisers, but it makes a lot more sense for Google to give that publisher a shot than to send that new (and potentially profitable) publisher over to YPN or another competitor.
As to the question of whether Google is trying to send a message with big drops in CPM, that's hard to say, but it wouldn't be unprecedented. On the AdWords side, landing-page quality scores (which result in higher minimum bids) have forced some advertisers to leave while giving others an incentive to create landing pages that improve the AdWords user experience. If you're seeing a large and sudden drop in eCPM, maybe you should think about changes that could benefit users and your own bottom line.
Side note: I've seen a lot of references here to declining clickthrough rates. Google has announced higher standards for what constitutes a legitimate (and countable) click, so--if your CTR has fallen precipitously--it might not hurt to review the way you use AdSense on your site. For example, just because Google encourages blending and allows multiple ad units above the fold doesn't mean its algorithm won't whack you if a lot of your clicks are being thrown out or aren't converting for advertisers. Taking steps to minimize accidental clicks might help your eCPM and earnings--not overnight, but over time. It's worth a shot, especially if you don't have many alternative sources of revenue.
Core site 1
Adlinks EPC -25.64%
AdLinks CTR -20.30%
Header EPC -1.50%
Header CTR -24.88%
Core site 2
Adlinks EPC -18.46%
AdLinks CTR +0.88%
Header EPC +4.00%
Header CTR -13.91%
Obviously the header EPC's jumped off the page however in my case it is clear to see where my reduction in earnings have come apart from the obvious CTR and that is the big difference in the AdLinks' EPC.
Interestingly the last few days I have noticed overall duing my UK day until 22/23.00 GMT that my EPC is in the middle of pre-Glitch averages, however after overnight clicks have been recorded my EPC drops dramatically to the bottom end of pre-Glitch averages meaning that the final 8/9 hours are much lower paying clicks.
What do I try and surmise from this?
My Asian/Middle East/European/American daytime advertisers ARE still paying a reasonable rate however ARE many now switching off their ads overnight leaving a plethora of very low paying clicks?
I'm not putting this forward as an anser to The Glitch, it's just another piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
Anyone else seeing similar metrics?
...multiple ad units above the fold...whack you...
But I don't think I'm being whacked for that because my site became unglitched on November 9 and aside from a few bad days I've been back to pre-glitch normal since then--and haven't changed the ad configuration. Which is one reason this forum hasn't been hearing from me much lately. :) Everything in my case points to a true glitch and not anything natural or intentional.
