January 2011 Adsense earnings

Adsense earnings analysis -

[chrisdonahue]

Hello Everyone: I ported the thread located here: [webmasterworld.com...]
as we were off topic in a few areas.

I'm highly interested in continuing the discussion about what other Publishers are seeing in 2011 with regard to their adsense earnings over years prior.

As I indicated, I noticed a substantial drop in earnings during the first few days of January 2011, after a record breaking December 2010.

Anyone noticing this trend is encouraged to share their feedback.

[Mentat]

It is normal to be like that.
I've checked the last 3 years.

[martinibuster]

January 1st was a holiday as well as a Saturday. Sunday January 2nd was another day off, a day of rest, a day for coming back from vacation, etc. Those days are so variable you might as well write them off.

The only real days of consequence for adsense earnings were two days, Monday and Tuesday. Today, the fifth of January, hasn't ended yet.

I think judging two days of earnings year over year is a bit too small a sample and arbitrary to be useful for drawing conclusions about a trend. Two days following a major holiday is too small to be used to draw conclusions of any kind. Certainly it cannot be used to determine what the rest of the month will be like, much less the rest of the quarter and still less the rest of the year.

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:22 am (utc) on Jan 6, 2011]

[chrisdonahue]

I can agree with both of those points. I just researched the past five years earnings and it seems, while the CPC in January 11 is lower than years prior, its only lower by a matter of cents.

Hopefully we'll see revenues rebound over the next 25 days or so, just seemed so odd to see a blockbuster December and a lackluster beginning to January.

Thanks!

[martinibuster]

In business sectors there are things going on in the UK that affect earnings in January and February. Winter weather can also have an effect. Consumer sales, for the past twenty years or so that I have been paying attention to them, have traditionally dived in January. Everyone's niche is different. For some December is their lowest point and it only goes up from there until the next December. For others they roll according to a different sales cycle.

Let's see how the month ends and compare that year over year. Maybe discussing December would yield more insights into the economy and perhaps an idication of where AdSense earnings are trending for 2011.

[HuskyPup]

Insofar as my sites are concerned I'm sorry guys however I have to disagree with you.

This is trending, yes trending, totally different to previous AdSense years for me, I have never experienced such a reduction in EPC for such an extended period.

If everyone were saying the same then I could say, that's AdSense life at present however there are members here recording new highs etc therefore something has happened to specific sites, widget sectors or Google is plainly screwing us around or fubard their smart pricing.

I've written it before but next week is crunch time for me and G, things either pick up or they're gone from my prime ad slots.

Would you accept a 50% reduction in earnings and do nothing about it? No you wouldn't and I'm not going to accept it either.

[chrisdonahue]

What are you seeing for your cost per click differentials? For instance on one of my sites, which is usually a peak performing site, I'm seeing .40 down from .50 year prior, and down from .95 from month prior. Is that somewhat of what you're seeing?

[HuskyPup]

16th December 2010 was the day it all went pear-shaped for me, it sticks out a mile and immediately noticeable with eCPM. For instance overnight it went from:

1st Nov to 15th Dec v 16th Dec to 5th Jan

eCPM -29.52%
EPC - 20.3%

Let's take earnings Jan 1-5 2011 v 2010 - 18.33%

Ok, 5 days not enough?

Nov 1 2010 to Jan 5 2011 v Nov 1 2009 to Jan 1 2010 -17.39%

My average EPC Jan 1-5 2011 v Jan 1-5 2010 -26.32%

And just to rub salt into the wound for the same period my clicks are +10.9%

You really do not want to see the comparison v 2005/6 at -37% for earnings alone.

[chrisdonahue]

HuskyPup, I'm seeing a bit of a rebound today and trend up from earlier in the week. Do you actively block any third party ads? Are you using any type of list to block MFA sites?

I used to use a list that I created through #*$!.com.

I just removed those listings from my ban list yesterday, and I'm noticing a rebound today. My CPC's are back to normal as well as my eCPM or RPM whatever.

We might want to go offline and talk about what you're seeing, but that did the trick for me. I was probably filtering competition.

Check your ban list. :)

[netmeg]

Are you seeing the same people advertising on your site HP?

[eniac]

chrisdonahue,
I do not block any third party ads.
What is ban list?

[HuskyPup]

Do you actively block any third party ads? Are you using any type of list to block MFA sites?

I've about the same 30 MFA sites in the Competitive Ad Filter for maybe 3-4 years.

Are you seeing the same people advertising on your site HP?

My UK advertisers seem to be precisely the same and there seems to be plenty of inventory and when using Firefox's Google Global the USA, Canada, Ireland and Australia seem ok likewise with WMTIPS.

This afternoon my EPC has actually risen to my normal low but the stats look hours behind compared to my logs, usually by this time of day I would be seeing ~50% of a day's earnings. I think the hamsters have well and truly overdone their partying this year:-)

[frank72]

Hello,
I am noticing a big drop in earning during these days of Janaury 2011. CPC is so low that in order to make 10 bucks I needs dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens..... of clicks!
December 2010 was GREAT! never seen something like that in my 4 years blogging. Usually is the other way around. Low december and high earnings in Jan.

I do not block anything in my adsense account but I am at loss at what is happening.

On Google Adsense forums and other internet forums people are reporting the same issue but again...this doesnt mean anything as people having good earnings wont post or complain at all, right?

[HuskyPup]

Several have posted that they have been doing extremely well so far this year but it would seem to be most are wondering what's going on, almost as though we're all waiting for G to flick that earnings switch.

They did a similar thing starting Friday 26th October 2007 when overnight my earnings plumetted, about 50% again, and then miraculously returned on Wednesday 2nd January 2008.

And there's no ceiling either:-)

[chrisdonahue]

I really have to believe that this is a software fluke on their end, which we will never hear about. It may effect some sites but not all, imagine how many data caching servers they must have to administrate the adsense and adwords program. If something goes wrong along the way, both the advertiser is at a loss as well as the publisher. If we're seeing "overnight" changes in performance, and our traffic is constant, either 1) advertisers are legitimately bidding less for the keywords our sites use, or 2) there is a significant problem within the G infrastructure which we will never hear about but will be resolved without us even knowing.

I have to admit its strange, we still haven't fully recovered, but like many here, we rely on advertising sources such as G as our primary incomes for ourselves and our families.

So I guess it would be nice to hear that G erred somewhere, but that's unlikely.

Today: fluctuating CPC is the name of the game, one second it will be what I have calculated as my baseline average CPC over the past five years, the next, down 50%.

What gives?

[jost]

Compared to my December average...

My EPC has done this:

Jan 1: down 34%
Jan 2: down 44%
Jan 3: down 47%
Jan 4: down 44%
Jan 5: down 34%

So far today, Jan 6: down 32%

this suuuuuuuuuuucks
I hope something changes soon, thats a big sudden paycut.

[Bddmed]

I hope something changes soon, thats a big sudden paycut.

Not if it's normal for your site. I'm down over 75% and knew it up front. Christmas shopping season is over. Some sites earn big money in that period others are profiting now.

This is what you said last year in January.

My AD revenue has dropped 50% in the last week. It was like a light switch went off

[chrisdonahue]

We have to compare year to year prior not month prior. Apples to apples if you will. While I saw some deviation from year prior, I am seeing rebound today, and that is also consistent with year prior. I was down to year prior in the first five days of the new year but I'm cautiously optimistic that we'll see modest gains in the next few days. Look for the trends forward in your year prior numbers to see if you had a CPC drop between January 1 and 15. I saw low CPC points during that period year prior then calculated against where I was trending in F11. Came to some logical conclusions that it was a standard trend for our suite of sites, just seemed odd considering I had a record breaking December which was not within the normal boundaries for my data compared to year prior.

It's adsense at the end of the day, and until there is a better alternative, it seems like we're all at the mercy of the adsense gods.

[nomis5]

My Adsense earnings for the past few days are following a trend of about 60% up on last year (a huge amount of additional effort has been put in) and that has been constant for the last few months.

But income from another secondary affiliate went from an average £28 per day to virtually zero from 24/12/2010 to 03/01/2011. Over the last two days those earnings have picked up to £6 then £14 per day.

The secondary affiliate never was and I suspect never will be the major earner but the difference between Adsense and another scheme is interesting. I think that Adsense tries to even out the troughs and peaks in some sectors whereas other lesser affiliates are never capable of doing this. Other affiliates just reflect what is happening.

So for me I suspect this is a very bad earning time as reflected in the secondary affiliate scheme earnings. Adsense has evened out the same trough to some degree. But the last two days show that the post-Xmas trough is ending and normality is returning. Just my take.

[jost]

Im not sure this is quite seasonal for me.
I dont see a pattern and have no statistical trust in 4 data points

Here is my EPC normalized across 2008-2011
Ignore the FIRST bar in each chart, its a normalizing bar

[imgur.com...]

Dec to Jan 2009, I actually got a big boost
Dec to Jan 2010, big dump
Dec to Jan 2011, big dump after a long climb in EPC the whole year
(january is obviously not over, so who knows where this number will end up)

So what does this tell me? I have no idea.
With a bad 2009 recession year, I think the data is all skewed anyway

My taffic has gone up a lot too, so im attracting more and more bidders.
I just hope the RPC recover quickly

[martinibuster]

I really have to believe that this is a software fluke on their end, which we will never hear about.

I'm confused about what is being discussed. Are you still talking about the last three days (of which it is understood is too small a data set to draw conclusions from) or have you expanded your data set? And doesn't the above quoted statement contradict what you said yesterday that your year over year Cost Per Click difference is off by mere pennies?

while the CPC in January 11 is lower than years prior, its only lower by a matter of cents.

In any case, CPC isn't the metric to obsess about. It's Earnings. ;)

[chrisdonahue]

I think others are concerned about their "earnings", while I've studied my particular data and see some things to be concerned about, but I will wait until after the 15th to measure more accurately my performance compared to year prior. I do believe others have valid concerns however.

[ladyk]

My ecpm dropped 40%. I was hoping that it will get better but at this point I'm wondering if I should just stop logging in my account and just let it be for a while as it is too depressing.


I'm done with placement and color optimization .. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.

[frank72]

@ladyk: yeah. I am done with it as well. I have changed font, color and size. Nothing seems to revert the depressing trend. From one day to another my earnings have more than halved (around - 65%). It is a little scaring because this is something out of reach. It doesn't depend on us at all. In cases like this I wish Google was a little more communicative and "user-friendly".
You know, It was sufficent a "Expect low earnings from...to... because of..." from Google and hundreds of threads on a lot of forums and websites wouldn't have existed at all.

[chrisdonahue]

Are there any competitive alternatives though? I mean really, what I've seen is that other content match vendors are even worse?

Seeing the same thing today again, btw.

[walrus]

<It is a little scaring because this is something out of reach. It doesn't depend on us at all.>
<I'm done with placement and color optimization .. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.>
<as though we're all waiting for G to flick that earnings switch.>

Seems like a symptom of throttling on both sides, G and AS, but it may be a natural web evolution.
It seems a lot of niches have lost traffic while maintaining rankings, season aside, facebook and all the other search engine homepage distractions from reviews to maps have eliminated the need or want to use search,(and position can be below the fold) all compounded by the newest hundred thousand publishers, top paying ads used up before lunch everday,.

less surfers + more publishers + more distractions = uh oh

[edited by: walrus at 2:31 pm (utc) on Jan 7, 2011]

[HuskyPup]

Yesterday was lowest CTR since mid-December, the upside was my increase in EPC back to within its normal range however I'm still 40% down compared to 2010 daily earnings.

Are there any competitive alternatives though?

Unfortuately for me not since my sites are global, I'm based in the UK and my trade worldwide uses AdWords as the default. I know of companies who have tried alternatives but, of course, the problem is a numbers game, they simply have nowhere near the quantity of publishers.

If the proposed Bing program doesn't go global I'll still be in the same situation unless I start my own offering. I could but I dont want to therefore if it continues like this for another week I'll put my own ads up for some new widget products we now have.

[netmeg]

Have you looked to see if all your countries / regions are down proportionately?

Me, I only serve small areas here and there, so I don't generally look for that.

[HuskyPup]

Down proportionately across the board.

EPC has collapsed again today, one site that used to average USD 0.30-0.40 per click has had just a mere handful at USD 0.05 per click, in fact so far today it looks miles behind again. This site's earnings today is so far 2.5% of its 2010 average. It's gone from a 2010 eCPM of USD 6.00+ to USD 1.00!

Something would seem to be desperately wrong however G is never going to admit to that, I'll see what transpires over the weekend and make the decision whether to remove AdSense from the prime slots come Tuesday evening however it's going to take a monumental turnaround by G to change the way I'm thinking right now.

[Bddmed]

Husky,

I don't know if it helps but I'm seeing holiday ads all over (one of) your sites. Based on the countries mentioned in your navigation.