March 2012 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[HuskyPup]

Well, my February was all over the place, very similar to The Himalayas in profile!

[andrewshim]

Worst day i've had all month, with 1.5 hours to go.

[HuskyPup]

One of my worst days of 2012, the only thing not down were my page views which were absolutely normal.

USA clicks were 81.25% of average with EPC at 67.75% (my lowest for the US in 2012) and with my CTR at 70.5% it's hardly surprising my US earnings were the 3rd worst of 2012 after January 1st and 2nd at 55.6% of 2012 average.

What a mess, a shambles, just what have the unsupervised kids screwed-up now?

[Play_Bach]

Horrible AdSense yesterday here too, HuskyPup. :-(

[rompil]

One of my worst days of 2012, the only thing not down were my page views which were absolutely normal.

USA clicks were 81.25% of average with EPC at 67.75% (my lowest for the US in 2012) and with my CTR at 70.5% it's hardly surprising my US earnings were the 3rd worst of 2012 after January 1st and 2nd at 55.6% of 2012 average.

What a mess, a shambles, just what have the unsupervised kids screwed-up now?

HuskyPup, I signed up to this forum after years of reading just to say "Remove Adsense".

It's working fine for me and others, but I've been reading how you are "almost" about to remove adsense for many years as it's performing at 46.5345% of the previous month. It sounds like your B&M business is doing well, so just try something instead of adsense or just remove it.

I don't think there's someone sitting in Google HQ pulling levers to reduce your earnings or mess up things on a daily basis. Your niche may be saturated, users now blind to ads, or a host of other things.

I'm not saying this to troll - I genuinely think you should either remove it or try something else. Almost every adsense thread on WW has you saying that if it gets worse then you'll remove it - and this happens most months. Give it a go and you may be surprised. Concentrate on the B&M site instead and release all that stress!

Good luck :)

[HuskyPup]

No stress here, merely disbelief that things could turn so bad with AdSense.

Firstly my niche is not saturated and I generally have a reasonable EPC however I find it incredulous that its value varies by so much from one day to the next when it used to be so reliable, likewise with CTR.

Secondly, I'm not saying anyone at Google is pulling levers to screw me over but when one witnesses a halving in CTR over night for absolutely no explicable reason I start to wonder whether someone has found the magic forumla to syphon publishers' accounts without alerting anyone?

Thirdly, AdSense is used to provide my customers' customers with the opportunity to advertise on my sites since they are, without doubt, the most visited for my widgets however I do expect a reasonable return for that advertising space and this is simply not happening right now.

Fourthly, hopefully in the next couple of weeks our new factory production capacity will be ready and then I will be able to remove 50% of my AdSense.

At the end of the day there are many complaining about reduced earnings without comprehending why, when, at the same time, Google declares higher earnings. There must be some kind of wierd world economy going on whereby my AdSense earnings are now at less than 10% of a few years ago meanwhile others earnings have gone up. If there were no demand for my products why is my B&M production sold out for 2012.

With regards to ad-blindness I feel sure that is a major issue these days however one thing I do know from several of my European stockists is that CASH rules now, and because my widgets are so heavy, they believe that many potential buyers just do not bother with possible alternative suppliers in the next county/state.

At the end of the day to me something smells and it does not smell very nice...just remember that everyone thought Enron was awesome and look what happened!

One day corporate Google IS going to have to explain itself more openly, too many questions are being asked by too many governments and people these days, they may think they're safe and no one will act however complacency is never the best friend to have.

[Windslide]

One thing is for sure, Adsense CTR is getting lower here too in Spain for the local webs. CTR has to do more with visitors behaviors. So either the mass behavior changes abruptly from on e day to another, o there´s something wrong with Adsense. My sites have 20% more traffic than the same period from last year, but CTR are down 50%.

Let me change this quote:

"I DO think there's someone sitting in Google HQ pulling levers to reduce your earnings or mess up things on a daily basis"

Visitors cannot go blind to ads from one day to another..

[snickles121]

I have noticed too that if you have interest based ads on or off it does not matter anymore. I have tried both ways and I get the same percentage of interest based ads with content based ads.

I think they are doing this to drive up CPC, but it may be killing CTR.

My keywords have not changed that I can see so I cant think of anything else why this whole mess started in January. Before January my CTR was awesome.

[breeks]

My sites have 20% more traffic than the same period from last year, but CTR are down 50%.

exactly the same with me

[farmboy]

On a related note, based on what I see this morning, I'd like to welcome Craigslist to the world of targeted ads on its site pages. Come on in Craigslist, the water is warm.

FarmBoy

[NomadMan]

Getting relevant ads is the main issue on my sites. I'd rather have no ads displayed at all iso the ads i keep seeing when i browse my own sites.

Ad relevancy seems to come in short term waves - between tsunami's of irrelevant ad. I can't see how this helps any-one. I wouldn't want any of my Ads to displayed on sites with no relevancy to viewing context.

As an experiment, i created my own "ads" redirecting visitors to other pages on the same site. This works better for the time being and reduces bounce rate for a bit.

Also i started filling slots with Chitika, CJ and others. Amazon still works well - conversion rate is reasonably steady.

[netmeg]

Surely among all this "doom and gloom" there must be folks who can say:

"I'm raging, new records everyday"

It can't be that one lop-sided.

Surely?

Sure, I'm up, I'm up every year (because my sites cover different seasons, it makes more sense to compare a month to the same month last year as opposed to the previous month) But I don't like to appear to be rubbing it in when folks are hurting.

My CTR is way down, like everyone else, but the EPCs are way up. The only issue I have is the one site that is getting bot-attacked; I can't show ads to direct traffic on that site, and that's gonna hurt later in the year. But nothing I can do about it till it stops.

[garyr_h]

I keep seeing ads that aren't in English on English websites, both when signed in and when I'm not and even on incognito.

I've seen the ads in Chinese and in Arabic being displayed.

[JCKline]

Just another slow day in the world of AdSense for me.

[Play_Bach]

> My CTR is way down, like everyone else,

Hi netmeg,
Any thoughts you care to share on why this is? Thanks!

[Lame_Wolf]

Worst day i've had all month, with 1.5 hours to go.

If it weren't for the high CPC, it would have been a poor day. CTR was low.

Today, everything is low.

[netmeg]

I think people are just frickin' tired of ads. Personally, *I* am tired of ads.

[Play_Bach]

I can understand ad fatigue/blindness being part of the CTR, but it seems to me that something else must be at play as well. As I recall, there was an across the board CTR drop starting well before Panda (not sure of the time, will try to look it up here because a number of us commented about it) which suggested to me something else was going on. I suspected a drop in advertisers, poor ad targeting, poor ad design as possibilties. Zombie traffic and just flat out lousy referral traffic from Google makes some sense too. Anyhow, just guesswork at best.

[jmccormac]

When exactly did they integrate that Interest Based Advertising? It seems that Adsense started to go downhill from that point for many webmasters.

Regards...jmcc

[netmeg]

I have never had a problem with ads - there seems to be plenty of them and they seem pretty relevant to me, and the EPC is through the roof now. People just don't click them as much as they used to.

I'm sure in a lot of cases (particularly since interest based advertising launched) they probably see the same ads on most of the other sites they visit now too. So if they're going to click on them at all, it's only by sheer luck they happen to do it from my site, as opposed to the other 30 or 40 sites they might visit in a day. Or if they're not that interested, they just go ad-blind and skip over them entirely.

[marcus11]

'I think people are just frickin' tired of ads. Personally, *I* am tired of ads.'

It could be that they are tired of looking at ads, but maybe it has to do with the economy too. Maybe tight budgeted people who would have clicked and purchased in a better economy, are now just 'browsing'.

[jmccormac]

I think that people are tired of pervy ads that follow them from site to site. That kind of thing is beginning to creep people out but Google doesn't seem to mind creeping people out.

Regards...jmcc

[JCKline]

I agree with the IBA adds being a big part of the problem. Ads following us around is extremely annoying. And in many cases, the user has already acquired the "widget" they were looking for, and now widget ads stalk them. I wish we could turn them off!

[Play_Bach]

I remember seeing some very well targeted ads once upon a time on my site and people were clicking them like mad. Surprised me as I was under the impression that ad blindness had set in years ago, but apparently if the ads were relevant people still were quite willing to click through to see what they were about.

Even though there's some two million AdSense publishers showing ads on many millions of sites, the vast majority of "civilians" don't share the same perspective on the ads that most webmasters do. Google continues to be making record profits with AdWords year after year and folks here like netmeg continue to be successful with AdSense, so obviously the programs still work. Less obvious is why so many publishers have seen their AdSense incomes plummet or what steps are needed for them to turn things around.

[JCKline]

Yesterday turned out worse then every. And today seems no better so far. It can only go up, unless Google adds negative numbers and then charges us for the loss.

[System]

The following 6 messages were cut out to new thread by incredibill. New thread at: google_adsense/4431595.htm [webmasterworld.com]
8:57 pm on Mar 20, 2012 (PST -8)

[Play_Bach]

Strange day in stats. They were moving somewhat this morning, then just stopped. Been stuck ever since.

[andrewshim]

"Why can't payment history be listed in reverse order with recent history first?"

+1,000,000,000

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday's stuckness never recovered. Earnings closed at 60% of average.

[JCKline]

Yesterday, bad, today, seems the same...bad so far.

[snickles121]

Yesterday bad here too along with today. Probably has to do with Saint Paddys Day.