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.

[eniac]

---

System: The following 17 messages were spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4253026.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 2:42 pm on Jan 18, 2011 (utc -8)

---

Hello,
Some or many people are suffering from Adsense earnings in these days.

I just want to know who they are. I want to know how many are there?

G does not communicate with us. G does not say anything officially to the publishers.

Maybe it is time to take an action to that problem. maybe it is time to make G to hear our voice. maybe it is time to make G to establish some way of communication with its publishers.

What can we do for that?
any suggestion?

[anand84]

I am seeing a drop in the past one week. Anyway, quite a few people seem to be noticing this. Check out this thread : [webmasterworld.com...]

[ErnestHemingway]

Hello,
From $900 to $400 a day. $500 loss per day and I have not touched a single site. They are all ranking, and in fact I see there has been spike in my traffic with G Analytics.

Traffic used to be 100% natural as all of my sites rank in Google.

It started past week and now I am going through depression+stress as I never had this type of figures for past few years I always reached up $1k a day.

Would be glad if someone can share insight.

[frank72]

Try to search for "adsense low earnings 2011" on Google and have fun...there are really a lot of people complaining about this. The issue is really widespread!

[ErnestHemingway]

Hello Frank,
What has caused this? I just cannot find the hole in my Adsense stats. Everything seem to match but EPC+CTR seems to have gotten some impact. Is Adsense going to be like InfoLinks or other low tier contextual advertisers?

[anand84]

I'm wondering if this is a cause - [webmasterworld.com...]

[frank72]

@ErnestHemingway: I really do not know. I wish I had proper reply to share with you all. I have read a lot of articles and threads all over the web but nobody has a clue. What everybody does want is this negative trend to stop. What everybody does fear is this negative trend will go on.

@anand84: i too have an unusual increase of google ads on my Adsense slots. My theory is that advertisers have little money...No better explanation than this.

[anand84]

I agree with Frank72. I am just assuming that most advertisers must spent up their budgets during the Christmas season and must be advertising less in January. But again, I do not have reliable numbers from last year, and so cannot confirm

[frank72]

@anand84: Yes I like this theory. However it doesn't explain everything. I have been blogging for 4 years now. Yesterday, I checked these past 4 years on adsense and this is the first janaury with such low cpc. If the "advertisers without money" theory was true we would have seen it in the past, we would have experienced it every past janaury in a loop way...

[tranquilito]

Yes, everything started on Saturday. 40% decrease for me. I remember something similar happened in October but lasted just few days.

I'm thinking that because more and more new websites are joining Adsense while the advertisers marketing budgets are the same or lower, the share per each decreases.

[ErnestHemingway]

@Frank, similar situation. I have not seen such a fall in earnings for 4-5 years now. So not sure how that theory could apply.

@Tranquilito, very similar situation it actually started Saturday for me as well, where it just started going down the hill.

[nick28]

I am just assuming that most advertisers must spent up their budgets during the Christmas season and must be advertising less in January

I think, that too many companies plan their budget for advertising monthley or quarterly.
And January should be the first and best month for advertising, because they have full of budget IMO.
I see the same ads on my sites as before January, therefore I think low earning has NOTHING to do with the lack of advertising.

[eniac]

interesting reading about advertising for year 2010 and 2011

What do you think on that?

[adage.com...]

[cien]

Change your ip if you can't read the article. Yeah, I'm sure FB and groupon have some eggs in the blame basket.

[Swanny007]

I'm not "suffering", far from it. But I did see an unexplained drop in revenue last week. It's back to normal now though.

I would definitely like to see better and more communication from the AdSense team(s) though, that is badly needed.

[ember]

I am an advertiser as well and I am not paying less for Adwords than I was last month (and I am paying 20% more than I was a year ago). So I don't think the drop is due to advertisers paying less.

[gmb21]

My guesses:
1. Interest based ads don't work on many sites
2. More publishers = smaller share of the pie
3. Ad blindness as people see Google ads on more and more sites

[Tashi]

@gmb21: your guesses can't be the reason of a sudden drop in earnings, like many of us have experienced. They can only be the reason of a steady decline.

My best guess is an algo change.

[frank72]

My best guess is an algo change.

...or a mass smart pricing punishment!...

[HuskyPup]

I'm still averaging within my new lows of 90-110% with the occasional 80-120% therefore this "thing" is here until they do something about it.

This year's Jan 1-18 earnings are now 24.35% lower than 2010 and my big pick up in earnings last year really started this week therefore if this continues, and I see no reason for it not to, then I'm probably looking at -30 to 40% lower earnings for January.

Oh, and believe this or not and quite amazingly, after thousands of clicks I'm only 26 clicks ahead of last year!

[frank72]

@HuskyPup: your last thread made hope for you..instead you are still in the low... sorry to hear it! :(

[adamxcl]

Same impressions, clicks, etc. 48% less revenue from just the start of January. I've done Adsense since the beginning and have never seen a shift like this.

[leeds1]

my EPM is fairly stable but my CTR has halved since the start of the year

[maximillianos]

Company ad budgets reset and expire. Sometimes it takes a few months for new campaigns to get going and funded. End of year you always get a surge as companies burn through leftover budgeted ad spend.

[nick28]

Company ad budgets reset and expire. Sometimes it takes a few months for new campaigns to get going and funded

Maybe you are right, if so it should be in the begining of every year in the past, but too many publisher claim (me included) that such a huge fluctuation has been never before.

[HuskyPup]

I have no doubt that some of the larger advertisers may set budgets like this however it is well-known in my industry that advertising is on a very regular drip-feed basis, our products are not seasonal nor suddenly in nor out.

I'm seeing the same advertisers and increasingly more for several years now, I just know that they all didn't reduce their CPCs overnight...if they were to get together and to do that then it would definitely be contra to UK competition law with regards to price fixing, cartels and monopolies:

[businesslink.gov.uk...]

[ember]

Shouldn't the new ASA be weighing in on this at some point?

[HuskyPup]

@HuskyPup: your last thread made hope for you..instead you are still in the low... sorry to hear it! :(

Tuesday's EPC was all over the place with my main url channel averaging 20% less than what I would call normal however my second url channel's EPC was -50% and this is for precisely the same products and ads meanwhile I had some specialist sites which were completely normal EPCs and, yet again, for the same ads.

Smart Pricing has never worked properly and that's been the situation over all my sites since the day it was introduced. I would far rather have a known fixed EPC of say 0.50 rather than 0.01-2.00 since no one in my industry, and many others I suspect, close sales on their sites, it's just not feasible for us.

[ErnestHemingway]

A lot of people are adding decent feedback, however this has nothing to do with Advertisors I know a lot of the advertisers in my niche and none of them have reduced or stopped advertising and I see the same old ads I have had before. Impressions and such.

I had stable earnings for 4-5 years, January was always a good month.

ASA should come on and help answer few doubts. Before by 10 AM I was in $200s now its hanging in $8 which is driving me crazy.

[Lame_Wolf]

No problems with the earnings on my sites. Doing okay :)