New AdSense Report Shows The Platform Visitors Are Using

[engine]

New AdSense Report Shows The Platform Visitors Are Using [adsense.blogspot.com]

Today, we’re excited to offer you a brand new report that shows you the platforms that your visitors are using to access your site. You’ll be able to see a breakdown of your earnings based on where your traffic is coming from, which you can use to then optimize your site and give users a better experience. For instance, if you find that you’re receiving a high percentage of traffic from mobile devices, we’d encourage you to create a mobile version of your website and monetize it with AdSense for mobile content.

With this feature, you’ll be able to see your performance data broken out into these categories:

- Desktop - all traffic coming from desktop users
- High-end mobile devices - includes smartphone devices
- Other mobile devices - includes low end and mid-range phones

[LifeinAsia]

Just checked it out- nice source of data!

[farmboy]

So if I don't have a mobile version of any of my sites yet I'm getting clicks and earning revenue from "high end mobile devices", that means for those people using "high end mobile devices" I don't need to have a mobile version to earn revenue from them - right?

The only category where I'm not earning revenue/getting clicks are those with "other mobile devices"

From a traffic perspective across all my sites (assuming this data is accurate), those with "other mobile devices" are accounting for about 4% of my traffic right now.

FarmBoy

[netmeg]

It means that they're probably on smartphones and tablets, and some of them can see your normal AdSense - but some of them may not. For example, my current BlackBerry doesn't see regular ads, but my old one did, and some versions of Safari (iPad, iPhone - and in fact my current BB displays a Safari user agent for some reason) block ads as well.

So you might be earning revenue, but you also might not be earning as much revenue as you would be if you served up mobile ads.

I will tell you this, having just come off the peak season for one of my sites. Mobile ad earnings were four times what they were last year, and while the CTR was lower than for the regular ads, the EPC for mobile ads was WAY higher. Like, three or four times as much as regular EPC, over mid three figures worth of mobile clicks/day type numbers. YMMV.

[farmboy]

netmeg - If this requires a long answer, just ignore it. But I'm wondering what you did to provide a mobile version of your site and to maintain it.

Is there an opportunity for sites specifically built for mobile users?


FarmBoy

[alika]

Very interesting ... yet confusing and worrisome at the same time

The report shows that

desktop = 12% of pageviews and 92% of clicks
high end mobile devices = 0.6% of pageviews and 8% of clicks
other mobile devices = 87% of pageviews and 0% of clicks

Data is not consistent with GA in terms of proportion of users visiting our site via mobile devices. I just can't wrap my head that 87% of my visitors use other mobile devices to see my site ... more so that we don't have mobile ads set up

[netmeg]

netmeg - If this requires a long answer, just ignore it. But I'm wondering what you did to provide a mobile version of your site and to maintain it.

Is there an opportunity for sites specifically built for mobile users?

Not a long answer for me at all. My sites are all in WordPress now, and I use a plugin called WP-Touch that makes a mobile-friendly version, and serves up an AdSense (or Admob if you prefer that platform) mobile ad - all I had to do was plug in my AdSense code. We did have to do a bit of tweaking to make it the way I wanted, but it's the same site and same URLs, basically just different CSS.

As for sites built for mobile users - depends on your niche. For my event sites, mobile is a natural. For other stuff, not so much. At some point you have to just decide to try it.

Data is not consistent with GA in terms of proportion of users visiting our site via mobile devices. I just can't wrap my head that 87% of my visitors use other mobile devices to see my site ... more so that we don't have mobile ads set up

You have to change the column to show the right ad impressions - unfortunately for some reason AdSense only wants to show me the old interface at the moment, so I can't see exactly what it says. But under Columns, pick the last option.

[alika]

But under Columns, pick the last option

That last column, Individual Ad Impressions, only leaves the desktop and high end mobile devices for me. Nothing for Other mobile devices (maybe because of 0 clicks?)

If I change to either Ad Requests or Matched Requests, the discrepancy between Desktop and Other Mobile Devices has narrowed significantly. But troublesome that we're apparently getting a lot of requests from Other Mobile Devices

in terms of impressions:

Desktop = 51%
High End Mobile = 4%
Other mobile devices = 45%

Our biggest site is a static website, hence it's not like Wordpress where we can simply use a plugin to add the mobile code. I'll have to learn how to create a mobile version of the site, then

[netmeg]

Well I have long post from last year that's still here somewhere about that. I kept putting it off because I thought it would be too much of a PITA to make a mobile site, but then the light bulb went on over my head (or I came to my senses) and I realized I didn't have to put EVERYTHING in mobile, I could just put the most important stuff (like search) and see how it went. That's what gave me the info I needed to proceed.

[alika]

I realized I didn't have to put EVERYTHING in mobile

Bingo! I've been struggling to think how to put thousands of pages in mobile manually. I'll start with the most accessed page in mobile.

Thanks for the great idea

[tebrino]

Almost 60% of my impressions come from "Other mobile devices" and these devices have 0% CTR. I tried looking at Analytics for these phantom mobile devices, but I can't find them. Most of my visitors still use Windows/Firefox or Windows/IE combo. When I exclude these devices, my CTR, CPM and other stats for desktops and high end mobiles are quite decent. Any theories on this? Could these be users with ad blockers or Javascript disabled?

[netmeg]

I don't have a really good explanation about those "other mobile devices" stats. They don't match up very well for me, but I have a lot of anomalies between AdSense reports and Analytics reports. I just kind of treat anything that's not coming directly from my own log files as an indication of trends, and not a gospel. And, for the moment, I'm pretty much ignoring the other mobile devices because I have no understanding of what those number mean.

[ThatsBoBo]

In another year or two every mobile device will show full web pages. I just don't have the time to create mobile versions of my sites.

I do have mobile versions of some of my pages that often get accessed from mobile devices, though, due to their content which is often needed on the go.

[elsewhen]

i am also seeing incredibly inflated numbers for "other mobile devices."

[nomis5]

I'm shocked! Spread over many websites, about 10% of my income is coming from mobiles and I thought the ads from normal sites like mine didn't appear on mobiles.

What is striking is how close the income is per page view from mobiles and desktops. Not much to choose between the two. CTR may change but it seems to be compensated for by a corresponding change in other factors which equal things out.

I still can't get my head around the fact that mobile users (even some low end mobiles in my case) are clicking on ads. But then again I've never clicked on any ad in my life so what do I know.

It would be interesting to know the split between those high end mobiles - are they tablets or just smart phones?

[netmeg]

GA will tell you that, if you use it.

I've seen some really interesting mobile trends lately. Last year, my traffic was all about the iPhone. This year, Android is *far and away* the largest mobile platform - by like, 600% (and that's even after I filtered out my developer who has an Android phone, ork ork)

On the other hand, for one of my B2B ecommerce clients, their mobile traffic is still a small percentage in actual numbers, but is up some 300% over last year, and it's almost entirely iPads. Which makes sense, if you think about it.

Mobile accounted for 20% of my AdSense income since June 1 (of the people who view as mobile. I have iPads set to view the regular site, as it renders just fine and displays regular ads on iPads) That's well into four figures, and not inconsequential to me, so I will be continuing to pay close attention to mobile, that's for sure.

Can't post a link here (I don't think) but Mobile Moxie has a web tool where you can view URLs as different types of mobile devices and compare them, if you want to see how your site looks. I'm sure you all know how to Google it.

[vivalasvegas]

I see about 10% impressions from High End Mobiles and just a few from Other mobiles. Surprisingly for me too - CTR is a bit higher for high end mobile users than Desktop CTR. I was convinced nobody would click ads when browsing on a smart phone. This is good news :)

[celgins]

I'm getting quite a few clicks from high-end mobile devices (20%), and almost none from other devices. I guess this is a good thing.

[lexipixel]

Last 30 Days

Page Views
============================
Desktop..................... 94.0%
High-end mobile devices...... 5.7%
(Unmatched ad requests) ..... 0.3%

CTR
============================
Desktop..................... 2.10%
High-end mobile devices..... 0.82%
(Unmatched ad requests) .... 0.00%

Monday morning quarterback's analysis?

[graeme_p]

I can currently see a huge difference for page views (a factor or 6 times) between my custom URL channel that appears on one ad unit, and that ad unit in the ad units report.

Earnings, CPC etc are the same, but anything that depends on pages views (RPM, CTR) also differs.

[docbird]

I only very recently started w mobile versions of my sites, using Drupal Mobile Tools module. Much easier than I'd thought this could be; not perfect, but likewise focused on main content.
With it, could switch off various blocks, so trimming down pages for mobile; also got rid of horizontal leaderboards, opted for slimmer and smaller adsense displays. Include travel info, which seems esp well suited to mobiles.
Also just seeing around 10%, tho on way smaller visitor nos than typical webmasterworld folk have.
Found that I can get report for a year ago, inc mobiles(more like 2%); and mobiles listed for 2009 but no results for them.

[frankbomarito]

My folks don't click much on any platform but surprisingly its about the same on mobile devices as desktops.

Las Month's Page Views
============================
Desktop..................... 85%
High-end mobile devices...... 14%
(Unmatched ad requests) ..... 0.1%

CTR
============================
Desktop..................... .10%
High-end mobile devices..... 0.13%
(Unmatched ad requests) .... 0.00%

I do have mobile pages but they only accounted for 3% of the pages accessed by mobile devices

[farmboy]

Using a tool recommended by netmeg earlier in this thread I looked at how one of my sites appeared on three different phones (well, I looked at how the tool indicated they looked)

In all three cases, the site looked fine, use of scroll bars was necessary to see it all, but there were blank spaces where AdSense ads were supposed to appear.

I looked around the web and it appears there are a lot of different "tools" one can use to create a mobile version of a site, but they all seem to have this or that disadvantage.

Isn't there a huge opportunity here for someone, maybe Google, to create some type of easy-to-use killer tool or application that creates mobile versions of sites where everything works as intended? Just the additional AdWords revenue alone would seem to make it worthwhile for Google.


FarmBoy

[explorador]

Interesting, most of my income comes from desktop, high end movile devices report a nice number too, but "Unmatched ad requests" is a number I would like to convert.

My clicks come this way:

Desktop:.....................88%
High end mobile..............3%
Unmatched ad requests...9%

I looked around the web and it appears there are a lot of different "tools" one can use to create a mobile version of a site, but they all seem to have this or that disadvantage.

I read a nice article on how to create a mirror like mobile site on a subdomain, in fact I tried it. It involes using a subdomain, htaccess and one script (you can easily do it via php or perl) where the scripts basically parses the selected page and performs regex to convert the page to basic html. The advantage on this over CSS mobile sites is, instead of removing, you can remove entire sections and make the mobile version small and fast. I played with a newspaper version and got amazing results.

The problem I see is, people are seeing the sites on other devices but the ads just won't show up. I see this happening when I use Opera Mini on my tablet or phone, while the native browsers display the ads just fine (but download the entire page).

[netmeg]

Don't know why your ads didn't display, farmboy; maybe the tools are set to remove ads (possible TOS issues) or maybe some other reason, but I sure wouldn't want something out there displaying my site for me, and Google has enough problems without getting into that too. I see that a legal quagmire they wouldn't touch. Even the tools don't let you view very much.

If I want to see how a mobile version looks, I can also use a FF extension called Default User Agent and switch it to iPhone or some other device; then I can view the site in FF as a phone would see (and see the ads)

[rocker]

Does (unmatched ads request) mean that no ads are showing or that the ads showing do not match the content of the site?

[rocker]

in terms of impressions:

Desktop = 51%
High End Mobile = 4%
Other mobile devices = 45%

alika, does your impressions say Other mobile devices or unmatched ad requests

Mine says

Desktop
High End Mobile
Unmatched Ad Requests

[simonbuzz12]

that's pretty cool to have this data in adsense reports....

[Taqwaconsulting]

I believe this was already there? right? I don't remember but i did see somewhere, the platform used by the visitors coming to my sites. Was it google or was it hosting providers stat tool?

[Leonard0]

I believe this was already there? right?

Yes, mobile stats are available in Google Analytics under Visitors > Mobile Devices.
Stats are reported by OS and differentiate between phones and tablets.