January 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Habtom]

I had a good run in 2011 - managed to add one more figure to my monthly AdSense earnings.

January historically is not a bad month for me. What are your hopes and plans for January and the new year?

Half an hour too early according to WebmasterWorld server clock :)

[zerillos]

Have any of you tried any alternatives lately? I didn't, however, they might just pay about as much as adNONsense these days...

[HuskyPup]

Never never never has LATVIA been my second highest earner of the day on ... USD 0.75 ... Folks, this is yet another Google screw-up/con.

I have now lost 99% of ANY credibility in that "company".

[andrewshim]

Never never never has LATVIA been my second highest earner of the day on ... USD 0.75 ...

Ahhh... but your highest earner may be U.S. @ USD750... [ducking to avoid beer mug ;) ]
cheer up Husky... you're still my fave WebmasterWorld member ;)

[HuskyPup]

I can't afford any more beer after the last two days:-)

One good thing is that my US EPC came back to normal whereas my UK earnings were the worst-ever at 1.05% of average. Canada was at 50% and Australia flatlined with bit fat zeroes across the board.

I'm going to suggest another data loss day simply because my logs are telling me I had my busiest day of the month yet G's Page View figures for the US alone indicate about 66%.

And as for it being Friday the 13th, I know it's early but already it's yet another disaster zone, they've got until tonight to sort this out otherwise unit removals start this weekend.

[denisl]

I am seeing my best results yet. In the travel sector I appear to have got some big boys targeting my site in the last few weeks, pusing the CPC to double what it averaged last January, while ad requests also happen to be higher on a site that has been going for 5 years

[snickles121]

I might have just figured out why CTR's suck so bad.

When I am logged in to Google and I go to my website I am seeing ads for web hosting all over my site and my site is not even in that subject area at all. The thing is I was just looking at web hosting providers before I viewed my site. I have never noticed this before.

What does Google not understand about not showing ads that are not related to my pages?

[Play_Bach]

> I am seeing ads for web hosting all over my site and my site is not even in that subject area at all.

Welcome to IBAs (Interest Based Ads). Been around a few years now. Unfortunately, publishers can't do anything about them showing up on their sites.

[HuskyPup]

And it's more than likely going to become much worse:

[webmasterworld.com...]

My wife's already complaining about Google results and simply hates Bing, methinks G is writing its own death warrant!

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday AdSense earnings limped in at 30% of average - again. :-(

[davedm]

Also in the UK and seeing poor earnings this week (after a good December).

[HuskyPup]

Farcical, I already have 25% of my regular daily US Page Views and my CTR is 0.15%.

I'm checking site codings now for 50% AdSense removal tomorrow.

[scotland]

I think Google Adsense has crashed and burned - a total waste of time and effort

[snickles121]

CTR today is 40% below average.

[snickles121]

CTR today is 40% below average.

[FrostyMug]

1/13/2012

CTR is very low here too. what is going on? Traffic/sources/volume all same.

[JCKline]

Seems better today for me, but it won't make up for the rest of this month.

[Slashus]

You can turn off interest based ads by:

1) Go to the Allow and block ads tab
2) Look on the left menu for Advanced settings
3) Turn it off

I don't know what to do at this point. Earnings across my network have been relatively stable for over 3 years. But since October the fluctuations of ctr and cpc have been undeniably uncharacteristic of our AdSense track record.

It's seriously messed up. Either they're scrubbing the hell out of valid clicks now or the way they match ads and run them on the sites in regard to appearance and content is messed up. Don't know.

I really hope Facebook comes up with a program like AdSense.

[Play_Bach]

> You can turn off interest based ads by:

Sorry, only affects what YOU see, not your visitors. There are many, many threads here on IBAs if you're interested.

[snickles121]

The thing is I already have interest based ads turned off. Thats why I can't understand why these unrelated ads are showing.

Today is my worst Friday in years and the sad thing is, traffic is up the last 2 weeks. I do remember this did happen last year around this time and it did continue up until March. I wonder if the ad pool is just really low right now.

[HuskyPup]

The thing is I already have interest based ads turned off. Thats why I can't understand why these unrelated ads are showing.

We were discussing this here recently, sorry I can't find the post, however it would appear that a cookie is dropped by whichever site you were on and then AdSense matches it up to relevant advertisers on the next AdSense site you visit.

Absolutely no privacy without constantly denying cookies or clearing cache etc which I do several times a day plus use at least three different browsers, Opera, Firefox and Seamonkey, whatever you do don't use Chrome if you do not wished to be tracked everywhere.

It may seem heavy duty but it's the only way I can get anywhere near relatively normal non-personalised results however whether they're worth having when Google is skewing everyone else's results is another question altogether.

[Play_Bach]

> whether they're worth having when Google is skewing everyone else's results is another question altogether.

Yeah. Why bother trying. It'd be one thing if we all saw the same Google - we don't.

[levo]

Just found this, it shows your categories and demographics and offers cookie based opt-out.

[google.com...]

[HuskyPup]

Interesting find levo, I'm trying the aboutads opt outs...seems to work so far on Firefox.

[snickles121]

Thanks Levo....

Also I would like to add that CTR has returned to normal today, and EPC only slightly down from normal. This gives me a little relief, but tomorrow is another day.

[levo]

Did you notice that the category list is very similar to the list on Ad Planner publisher options?

[Play_Bach]

AdSense earnings yesterday just under 30% of average.

[snickles121]

Yesterday ended up as a normal Saturday.

However, today is super bad, only 20% of a normal Sunday for both CTR and EPC.

What I have been noticing is that if the day starts off bad it usually ends up that way for the rest of the day.

[Mentat]

Yesterday was minimum this year as eCPM and total revenue.
Today seems like yesterday, very low eCPM.

If this the new direction for the next month... it's not good :(

[scotland]

clicks with no money - do they disallow clicks from different countries such as China? does google not realise that they often have more money to spend than people in the UK?

[eddieh]

>> clicks with no money - do they disallow clicks from different countries such as China

I have been noticing for some time that clicks from certain countries are not being credited. The main ones are India, Philipines and Indonesia although Middle East countries such as Saudi Arabia and UAE seem to have joined the list as well.

In addition, they seem to have a black list of certain IP's from where clicks are not credited. That list or filter includes any type of educational establishment in the US such as school districts and Universities etc.

Adsense seems to be morphing into a CPA system rather than a straight forward click based system