Adsense earnings too low?

Google balancing act

[Rockyou]

Wonder why your Adsense earning dropping inspite of full adsense optimization? well blame Google? or Bing?

Google is just doing the balancing to keep everyone happy, Suppose Google increases adword advertiser rates, advertisers start to switch to Bing, which is not good for anyone. Google wants nobody to leave their network

2.Suppose Google decreases adsense publishers earnings, can do till there is no major network competing anywhere close to its payout.So risk of publishers leaving is fairly low.

3.Suppose Google increases publishers sharing say from 68% to 78%, Can't do this because it effects the investors return and stock price heavily.

So Google is in fix, It can do nothing to increase your earning except few tips of optimization which can help a newbie not for old timers.

what can increase your payout?
Market forces, If Bing increases advertisers rate then Google can also increase your earning or else you are in a fix.

or

If Bing loses its market share can help us to make more money since advertisers have only one option that is Google.

[tangor]

I just figure it is the other fish in the sea have figured out how to plug into the web "sense" of advertising, G, B or whoever. Every Tom, Dick and Harry are doing this now and with millions on board for the same dollar, it gets sliced thinner and thinner each week...

[nippi]

After 5 years with adsense, having tried other options... i was convinced until recently that adsense was the highest paying solution by far for publishers. The biggest % returned, the biggest pool of advertisers, the highest rates and the most ontopic ads.

But. no longer. After 7 weeks of testing I have learnt, as I suspect others ahead of me have, that premium off topic banner ads now pays better. A LOT better in some of my niches.

Adsense still has a backup place in my heart but for now, its premium banner ads for me.

[Scurramunga]

Every Tom, Dick and Harry are doing this now and with millions on board for the same dollar, it gets sliced thinner and thinner each week..

...and at an alarming rate as it would seem.

[nick28]

Shortly I have realised that placement ads (targeted ads) aren't working for me.
Every day there are nearly 10k impressions with placement ads 50% lower than contextual in my stats report ( you can see yours in new adsense interface under "Performance reports" -> click on "Entire account by day" -> Targeting Types ).
Nowhere in web, I could find an advise how to block placement ads totally.
It could be a reason of some of you too with low earnings.
Is there a way to opt out placement ads?

[cien]

It's really easy to turn it off on the old interface under:

Adsense Setup > Channels > Edit Settings > Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement.

Are you sure you entered helpful information in the channel settings that could help advertisers target them with the correct ads in the proper format? Did you specify the location of the ads? Did you enter specific site keywords?

[nick28]

Adsense Setup > Channels > Edit Settings > Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement

I have seen this option, that is disabled by all my channels, but still there are 10k impressions of placement ads.

Someone wrote in web, that most of placement Ads are cpm based image ads and are not paid well ads.
In my case, I am better done with contextual ads and not placement targeting, this is why I wanted to disable it totally.

[adamxcl]

I hadn't dug into comparing the numbers much before. The placement targeting ones are terrible for me. They show a bunch of impressions and make just about zero compared to the contextual. Huge difference. I'll disable it if I can.

[martinibuster]

Google could promote the contextual network more aggressively. Perhaps they feel it will poach on the more lucrative search network? Or will promoting the contextual network grow the pie?

[creeking]

After 7 weeks of testing I have learnt, as I suspect others ahead of me have, that premium off topic banner ads now pays better.

I just want to confirm that OFF topic banners worked for you.

[adamxcl]

So looking back a little bit, it appears that I was making some money on the placement targeting spots. Right around the time of the overall decrease here in January, many of those numbers went down to zero. Still showing impressions but revenue tanked to nothing. So that going off the rails was one part of the decrease for me.

[netmeg]

I'm not positive, but I don't think turning off Show this channel to advertisers as an ad placement will completely stop placement ads. All that does is prevent the advertiser from targeting a specific spot on your site (like if you were the local newspaper site, and the advertiser just wanted to target the Food section) If an advertiser just picks a category that Google has lumped you into (or specifically targets your entire site by domain) you'll probably still get placement ads. It used to be that you had to write to AdSense to get them to shut down placement ads - they would write back saying "are you sure?" and you would say yes and they would write back again and say "are you really really sure?" and you would say yes and then they'd do it. Then you'd have to email them to turn it back on again if you wanted to.

Nowadays, the emails AdSense support are bounced if they don't follow a specific track (or subject matter) so I don't even know if you can still turn off placement ads entirely.

FWIW, I turned 'em off for a while, and noticed no difference, so I had them turned back on. Last year during my high traffic days, they did pretty well.

[Leonard0]

there are nearly 10k impressions with placement ads 50% lower than contextual in my stats report

Make sure that you have set the Column headings to ad Requests. If you are comparing on the basis of Page impressions, it may make the CPC and RPM of placement ads appear lower than contextual ads.

Someone wrote in web, that most of placement Ads are cpm based image ads

Not true, if I am interpreting the reports correctly. My reports show that 20% of impressions are placement ads and less than 0.01% are CPM ads.

[nick28]

Make sure that you have set the Column headings to ad Requests.

You are right, when I choose the Ad requests, the rate of placement ads are nearly the same as contextual, but when I choose Page views or Individual ad impressions, placement ads are way below contextual.

[Leonard0]

Correction to what I said above:
If you are comparing on the basis of Page impressions, it may make the RPM of placement ads appear to vary greater from the RPM of contextual ads than when comparing by Ad Requests.
There is no affect on CPC.