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.

[adamxcl]

Does it seem like maybe a good method to kill publishers dollars for a period of time, raise them a bit, make everyone grateful and happy again with a new normal low? This was more sudden but it seems like my "normal" has been going down hill for a long time. With two days a bit better than the past two weeks, I am probably looking at this new normal high. I am getting more traffic than ever and making less than ever with this particular revenue channel anyway. My other channels are higher which makes me discount the theory of lower budgets or advertisers in the pool.

[cien]

I'll see how the day goes today but it appears I might have to block image ads as I'm seeing millions of useless branding only ads that have nothing to do with the content. This started yesterday. Before I had seen only the useless google and groupon ads but now I'm seeing the domains mentioned above and a ton of others all over the site. CTR yesterday was way too low.

[nick28]

I am getting more traffic than ever and making less than ever

Exactly the same here.
I have reached 100k organic traffic per day, but earn lower than 70k.
Most of my traffic come from US,Canada and Europe.
Every day it begins with normal CPC,CTR and eCPM and ends very LOW.

I think G has made a new Algo as follow:

more traffic == less earning
2 days of the week >= normal earning ( to make publisher satisfied)
rest of the week(5 days) == LOW earning (to make themselves and Advertiser satisfied)

[HuskyPup]

A good click volume Tuesday however my EPC was back to its 2011 average but it did leave me with a bit more than my desired minimum daily average, in fact my average since Monday 17th has been my minimum daily expectation to within a few pennies.

Tell me that there are no updations today, I seem to be stuck at about a couple of hours in to the new day, a good 4 hours behind!

[Tropical Island]

January historically has been our biggest earnings month with AS.

This year it will be one of the lowest in the last 12 months.

Either the advertisers are abandoning content advertising or something is wrong with the types of ads they are displaying.
This is also affecting the amount I can spend in AdWords to promote our business.

[AdSenseAdvisor]

Following up from my post last week here on January earnings, [webmasterworld.com ]

I checked with a few members on the Product team and can confirm that there haven't been any testing or changes in our backend or smart pricing that would impact your earnings. The last time there was a change made to smart pricing on our end, we individually contacted publishers who would be noticeably impacted as a result.

I do recommend reviewing the resources and factors that I mentioned in my previous post to analyze your earnings. If you're using the new interface, you can also get more detailed reports to see if for example, placement-targeted campaigns have stopped running on your site after a certain date. I also posted a thread a few days ago on the new Interest Based Advertising report feature, that lets you see how much you're earning from interest-based ads, so you might want to take a look at that new report as well.

ASA

[jost]

Same boat as nick28.... highest traffic ever. It seems the more I increase my traffic, google lowers payouts so I end up making the same or less.

Its psychologically painful to work harder and harder, be successful increasing traffic and then getting punished for it with a lower salary :(

I hope this is just the recession effect, and in the future, my salary will suddenly double/triple and my traffic building efforts will actually have an effect.

[HuskyPup]

The last time there was a change made to smart pricing on our end, we individually contacted publishers who would be noticeably impacted as a result.

Really?

You actually informed a specific group of publishers that their earnings would be impacted? I assume downwards?

I always expect December to be my lowest month of the year but for January to almost mirror it is completely new territory insofar as AdSense is concerned.

I wonder if you can ask the Product team if they can see data, like the British government claims, that the adverse weather conditions in various parts of the world end November through December, may have played a part in all of this?

I ask this since I was very surprised by a customer of mine a couple of days ago who said they were just catching up with all their planned December work because of the weather!

[cien]

Nothing is helping, ain't it.. Traffic is up, CTR and EPC rock bottom. Adsense is turning into a royal joke. Either something is wrong on their end or advertisers are leaving Adwords for some other advertising platform.

[edited by: cien at 9:16 pm (utc) on Jan 26, 2011]

[Scurramunga]

Rock bottom earnings today

[Play_Bach]

Very slow day here too.

[ChanandlerBong]

great day today.

Thought it was worth posting that. For every poster posting here about falling earnings, there's another on the mirror side whose earnings rose, but who doesn't feel compelled to post here. We all know why. Misery loves company. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, etc. etc. Oh..and those earnings winners are out in the sun enjoying life.

well, apart from me. :o)

[sabrebIade]

Well following ChanandlerBong's idea, mine is below average still, BUT higher than yesterday.
Still not as high as Monday's though.
Monday was the low side of what used to be "normal".

[Tashi]

Yesterday was the first day my earnings were back to pre-Thanksgiving levels. Let's hope it stays that way...

[HuskyPup]

Let's hope it stays that way...

Don't get your hopes too high, G has only one interest and that's itself and by testing just how much pain we're prepared to suffer before we start removing their code.

They know they've traditionally been the highest paying, I'm now convinced they're maximising their earnings by reducing ours to a level nearer their, outside of the US, lower-paying competitors.

It stinks however I'm not sure there is anything anyone can do to force an investigation is there?

[frank72]

I am roller-coasting here. Three days ago I had a great cpc today is nose diving and when I thought that cpc hit ground...it just started digging!

[SEO2Go]

Each month gets worse and worse. After eight years with the program I am about to call it quits. Shame.

[nick28]

Each month gets worse and worse

Each month gets worse and worse for Publisher, but NOT for BIG G ;-)

[bumpski]

I think Adsense/Adwords has shot themselves in the foot with third party Advertisers. Isn't it likely that third party advertisers, to gain customers, are cutting rates? So advertiser's are migrating away from Adwords to the third parties. There now is drastically more competition amongst the advertising services. So the average earnings for Google and publishers is going to drop. Adwords had a captive audience and they've spun it off to third parties! It could be that moving to third party advertisers has cut Google's costs enough that their profits are up even though revenues are down (I doubt it though).

What is your Adsense Revenue share?
If you go to your Adsense settings page and scroll down you'll see the numbers. Here's Adsense's explanation.
[google.com...]
I believe Google has even said that their share is smart-priced the same amount as yours.

Google has also shot themselves in the foot with smartpricing, discounting to the next highest bid simply does not make sense. Before smart pricing advertisers were willing to pay their actual bid! They were advertising! Publishers were getting fair pay for content.

So early on Google was gaining in market share before smartpricing. All the sudden with smartpricing (discounting to the second highest bid, imagine that at a real auction) they basically offered a massive discount to gain more market share. NOW they are giving up their content network market share to third party advertisers? I believe their premise was, with third parties, they'd just gain more advertisers, but they forgot that Adwords advertisers can just migrate to the third parties.

And of course the cream of the crop stay in the search network or perhaps even migrate there.

Actually just a little brainstorming to stir things up a bit.

[Scurramunga]

discounting to the second highest bid,

I would be interested to know where you sourced that.

[cien]

Just removed Adsense code for awhile guys and try the alternatives.

[SEO2Go]

Good luck, Cien. I'm not far behind.

[Play_Bach]

Last couple of days I've hit the daily average I've come to expect as 'normal' for me. While not the stellar earnings I had Sept 2008, it's nice to be able to report that I'm at least earning something again. Thanks Google!

[moheybee]

Last few days earnings have gone back up to average for me.

[Scurramunga]

And to those of us whose earnings are floundering; I say, better get used to it, as it is our Adsense destiny.

[HuskyPup]

Strange Thursday!

Ok, I hit my daily minimum however considering my main earning sites are all about the same subject the differences in EPC average was huge.

Main directory site's EPC was completely back to the old norm, in fact my best earning url channel was very good but still within its old earnings' range.

For nearly all other sites my EPC was almost 50% of my 2011 norm consequently making it nowhere near as good a day as it could have been or maybe even my best day of 2011!

Methinks they're playing around with Stupid Pricing again and trying to tweak it back in-line after all these complaints since there is absolutely no way all my advertisers have decided on the same Thursday in January to increase their bids.

[frank72]

Sorry guys for the following question. I know that it is rather...naive but I would appreciate some reply. What will happen if I add "adsense-compatible" ads such as Infolinks for example?
Will Google penalize me under a SERP point of view? I can't stand this low cpc anymore and I would like to do something.

[manny123]

AdSenseAdvisor, thanks for your participation and for providing some relative sanity in an otherwise uncomfortable process. I have read this board for a long time and the collective chicken little does tend to proclaim that the sky is falling from time to time. This is one of the worst I have witnessed though so any further digging you can do is greatly appreciated.

All, my month was rolling along as a normal rate (when seasonally adjusted) and I was in the same camp as ChanandlerBong in that, things were reasonably good, but I was watching the drama unfold on this thread with some concern. I have seen a disturbing drop this week by about 11%. As a few have said above, traffic is higher than ever but earnings are not. I am in the "wait and see" camp but I have to agree that the volatility seems a bit unusual. For example, some days this week when I woke up (EST), I saw an astronomically high CPM (roughly 5x my normal morning CPM) only to watch it fall throughout the day and then end with lower than normal earnings for the day. Something is amiss.

[manny123]

Frank72, I believe the general consensus to be that using (or not using) Adsense has no impact on the SERPs. It makes for a good theory, but I genuinely believe that it doesn't make a difference. If anyone disagrees, we should probably start a new thread (or rehash an old one) as this it would probably spiral off-topic from the current ad-pocalypse that this thread is about.

[bumpski]

I would be interested to know where you sourced that.

The bidding is certainly a complex topic these days, especially with third party networks.
Adwords uses a modified "Vickery Auction" see the notes at the bottom of this document.

[google.com...]
Put Nobel Prize-winning theories to work.
Google’s unique auction model uses Nobel Prize-winning economic theory4 to eliminate the winner’s curse – that feeling that you’ve paid too much. While the auction model lets advertisers bid on keywords, the AdWords™ Discounter makes sure that they only pay what they need in order to stay ahead of their nearest competitor. This long-term approach has helped Google attract thousands of advertisers since the system launched in 2002.

[adwords.google.com...]
Positional bid discounting:
When in doubt, bid high. The position preference feature protects you by discounting your bid if it places your ad above your preferred position. Set your maximum CPC to the highest amount you are comfortable paying, and AdWords will discount it when possible.

What is smart pricing:
[adwords.google.com...]
Google has needlessly driven prices far below the competition.

Third party ad auction?

[adwords.google.com...]
How the DoubleClick Ad Exchange auction works:
"The highest bid (which could be the publisher's min CPM or an ad from the publisher's ad server) wins and is charged the gross rate of the second-highest bidder. If the winner is from AdWords, the reduced rate (from step two) is adjusted back up to the amount before the AdWords revenue share was taken."