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.

[jost]

My earnings drops is all due to lower Epc

[sabrebIade]

Since the 15th, I have been at about 50% of last January as far as earnings go, with almost identical (slightly higher) traffic.
So more traffic, less earnings.

[snickles121]

My lower earnings is due to low clicks. My epc is decent and traffic is great. I also un-did all this blocking of catagories and image ads because I was starting to lower my epc because of less competition for adspace by doing this. Im just gonna let this run its course as it is probably only temporary anyways. The only thing that helped was placing more text link units, but only slightly.

I think we are all overlooking into this. One theory of mine is all the advertisers overspent in November/December months due to the up beat of having more sales this xmas compared to the last few years of economic depression. My bet is we will be back to normal by March. They will all start spending sooner or later again. Just be patient.

[Scurramunga]

My earnings are now 24.3% lower than than for Jan 1-20 2010.

My average January earnings so far are about 60% down on Jan 2010 averages. Traffic seems ok after a brief lull around Christmas.

[ember]

In the new interface, under the Help section, there is the question: Why are my earnings dropping?

The answer is: Changes in your earnings over time are common. These changes are often due to updates to our ad targeting system or changes in the price of ads on your pages, your page content, or user behavior.

Well, that explains it.

[eniac]

@ember
do you think this explains sudden drop adsense earnings?

[cien]

"updates to our ad targeting system".

Do we have an admission here that sometime in January they changed their algo? for the worse... We screwed!

[ember]

@cien, I was actually being facetious. Google is saying that the drop in revenue, and I don't think they are referring to the current drop being experienced by many people, could be due to anything and everything.

[zerillos]

traffic up, earnings down. yesterday and today I hit a new low. ads seem to be better than a few days ago. well targeted and quality ads, but somehow, people don't want to click them. i find that very hard to belive. really hard to believe...

[Lame_Wolf]

The best thing Adsense can do for us is to allow more fonts and different size adverts. Keep it fresh because Adsense is becoming stale at present.

[indyank]

Lame_Wolf, you too facing lower click throughs! :)

[Lame_Wolf]

Lame_Wolf, you too facing lower click throughs!

About the same as usual. Within accepted parameters, but it does need something like more fonts or more sizes to stop ad-blindness.

[frank72]

Sorry guys, I have not posted here for a while. Sooooo... last three days my cpc bounced back to normal. I had nice earnings and everyting was ok.
Things to notice:
1) during these three days number of clicks diminished. I lost around 25% of clicks in comparison to Janaury trends. (but I earned more in comparison to any Jan day)
2) cpc was OK and passed from 0,0X to 0,XX (figures in euros)
3) the very first day the cpc was incredibly, incredibly, incredibly high (it lasted for 4-5 hours)
4) I didnt do anything on my blog. I didnt change anything on adsense as well.
5) Ads were (and are) very targeted. I even saw some old ads I used to see in sept-dec.

This morning everything reverted to the same sh&%! cpc is very low and its is bouncing back and forth between 0,0X and 0,0Y As for the rest everything is the same cpm and ctr is ok.

Do you know now what I am gonna do now with all these infos?
I am going out, yes, to that little pub I know. I am gonna sit down, I am gonna order the same drink and I am gonna drink it in the same slow, old fashioned way I know! I dont want to spend amy more time with all this mambo-jambo adsense data!
Have a great saturday guys! :)

[nick28]

We should find another solution for the adsense low earnings.
We all need an Adsense backup ads, because Adsense covers only ca. 70% and the rest is eitgher public ads or blank.
I think we should find another ad company in addition to Adsense to fill the remaining 30%.
But unfortunatley to find an eligible ad network is hard.

[eniac]

@nick28
you can create a new topic for that. We all try to find the best alternatives to adsense. Share experiences etc.

"Low Adsense earnings and its alternatives" smt like that

[indyank]

There was and is a huge business potential for online ad networks, if they can do what google did so far to its
1) publishers - paying them a decent share and be consistent
2) advertisers - be true to them in everything

Many networks emerge but, unfortunately, no one tries to copy them, rather they fail miserably in both the above...

and I can only hope that google doesn't copy them...

[Leonard0]

Adsense covers only ca. 70% and the rest is eitgher public ads or blank.

Are you looking at the right report page?
The Performance Overview shows ad units and link units mixed together. Since link units are calculated differently and have very low numbers they are messing up the average.

Select Ad Units from the drop-down menu on the left to get the actual coverage report for text ads. Set your Columns to Ad Requests to see the Coverage data.

[nick28]

Are you looking at the right report page?
The Performance Overview shows ad units and link units mixed together. Since link units are calculated differently and have very low numbers they are messing up the average.

Select Ad Units from the drop-down menu on the left to get the actual coverage report for text ads. Set your Columns to Ad Requests to see the Coverage data.

YES, My Average Coverage Total for all ad and link units for January 64% so far.
Every one can see his and report it here.

Shortly I have had an email from G , they wanted to thank me for showing the public ads as alternative ads:-)))
I don't know how many of you has gotten this email from G, but public ads must be showing so many that G sends an email to thank us :-)))

[nomis5]

epc for me has fallen very sharply from around 2nd January. Page views are the same. This is the first time ever that I have seen a fall of this magnitude. I normally don't post in these "my Adsense earnings have dropped" threads other than to say mine haven't. But this time they have.

If Adsense earnings fall by another 30% they will be on a par with my Vibrant earnings. And here's the thing, my key earnings from Adsense come from square ad blocks, 350 or 336 wide. Compare that to Vibrant ads which are simply double underlines and the comparison between the two, site appearance-wise, is a major factor.

Never, ever did I believe that there was an alternative to Adsense but now that belief is definitely a possibility as far as my sites are concerned. I have not recently investigated other alternatives such as Kontera etc but my efforts are now swaying away from Adsense. I won't be trying Adbrite (a total waste of time) but it is in my diary to investigate Vibrant-like alternatives for this year.

Just my opinion, but think on this, I earn my living form my sites, I have done this for the last six years and always believed that there was no alternative to Adsense. Are they taking a short term profit from us publishers? I think so and am not going to stand by without investigating the very real alternatives out there.

[cien]

ASA, open that EPC faucet! You are killing us out here man/woman! :)

[maximillianos]

Last year we saw a 10% drop in eCPM from the holiday/new year cut over. This year we are seeing a 13% decrease. So in our case it has remained somewhat consistent.

We have 3rd party ad enabled and have never blocked any networks.

[eniac]

@maximillianos

do you actively use adwords?

[adamxcl]

I keep thinking each day that it can't get any worse. But it just keeps going down. As I get more traffic to the site as usual in January. I'm supposed to have a spike in Jan over Dec for my sites and I'm getting that in everything but Adsense. My other ad networks and indicators are up as normal so only Adsense is going against the grain.

[maximillianos]

@eniac- yes we have a small but steady Adwords budget.

[koan]

I wonder why there isn't a thread in the Adwords forum called "January 2011 Best bargains in years!"

[tristanperry]

EPC today is just pennies/cents so far, very very poor (considering usual EPC is quite a decent £0.nn amount)

[cien]

Still extremely low EPC here.

[Play_Bach]

Slow and low. Again. :-(

[newborn]

Its strange - we have not seen some solid theories here why earnings are low. When this happens, this is where I start my analysis. Its either my fault, Googles fault or Nobody's fault - so here is where I start

Nobody's Fault
Check Google Insights to see if the keyword that delivers most of my traffic/earnings is out of season based on 2004 - 2010 seasonality. Out of season keywords would deliver a lower EPC, that goes without saying.

Check number of competing sites changes monthly. The reason is because I believe that keywords that deliver more competing pages will have a lower EPC and vice versa. So if my keyword competing pages increases dramatically over a 2 month period I should think you can expect a downturn in revenue and impressions and earnings are gobbled up.

My Fault
Check to see if there is a loss of traffic based on a ranking slip. (Pagewash delivers US based searches) - Big Plus. If I lost ranking then I add new content, do more article marketing add more social media links and then - wait.. and wait... and... you get the pic!

Check to see if PSA's are showing up on site pages - If they are it could mean that Im doing something that is making the AdsenseBot / Google Media Partners spider my pages - so I add them to my sites robots.txt file and resubmit it through G Webmatser Tools.

I also scan myy entire site looking for stop words like death, shoot, bullet etc - you get the drift and then remove them and resubmit to the G Index.

Googles Fault
Poor Tracking - Where my site impressions and G's differ I know its G slipping up - with some no show jobs...

G counting good clicks as invalid - yes it happens - they are not perfect.

Just where I start guys

[eniac]

How did this week start? good, bad, ugly? :)