April 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

The rollercoaster ride continues

[JCKline]

I'm hoping April brings more than flowers, as March ended pretty poorly on my end. What's to come...

[R0meo]

dude, i am not talking about GOOGLE revenue; google owns tons of #*$!, huge chunk of money comes from Motorola, yet why would i bother myself talking about that stuff.

I am referring adsense only (main and biggest chunk of google revenue still comes from adsense/adwords).

how to explain that days with "reports stuck message (red bar)" - my revenue for that day is always lower than normal days (without red bar). Coincidence? - i really doubt it.


how to explain ctr and cpc jumping like crazy. One day is ok, another - flushed to the toilet.

not saying i know even a small #*$! how adsense TRULY works, yet past few month were just abnormal in their system.

it used to be some consistence, i used to predict my next month revenue just by counting my website growth rate. And my prediction were close enough.

Now i can predict #*$!

don't want to get into debate here, really. Honestly, i appreciate your opinion.

[netmeg]

it used to be some consistence, i used to predict my next month revenue just by counting my website growth rate. And my prediction were close enough.

Now i can predict #*$!

The entire system is a lot more complicated than it used to be, starting with many many many AdWords changes. That's not fishy, that's evolution. And unless you understand AdWords pretty closely, you'll never understand how AdSense ebbs and flows. You don't have the same ads, the same placements, the same type of bidding, the same devices and the same device bids now that you even had six months ago, let alone two or three years ago.

If you think it's "fishy" then I repeat - why run AdSense? I wouldn't allow ads on my site if I thought there was a better than average chance I was being ripped off. Why do you?

[Powdork]

speaking of adwords. just wondering how come my suggested bids haven't dropped by 90% to match adsense cpc's drop over the last week.

[R0meo]

if you can point me a network that pays even close CPC - i will be happy to move. I really hope Microsoft + yahoo will pull their media.net to the level that can compete with adsense. Sadly, it is not likely to happen ( at least in the near future)

i am not into clickbank, cpa, amazon or any other stuff. I just go with cpc.

By "fishy" i don't mean - stealing.
I meant some tweaks/changes or errors are going on their part and publishers are left just to speculate.

[netmeg]

Well yea, of course. AdSense is what it is. That's what we trade away in exchange for ease of use, higher EPC (even these days) and fairly consistent payout dates. If we want more control, we know what we have to do.

[ember]

I'm dreading the day Adsense goes away, and I have to scour the net for advertisers on my own. I don't know where I would get the time or energy. I'm just hoping Adsense continues for a few more years until I can comfortably retire.

[Powdork]

i don't see how you can not think there is something fishy going on if for years your ctr has been in a very slow decline from 4% (pre-florida)all the way down to where it seems to hit a bottom at .72%, where it stays for well over 2 years. Then overnight it jumps to over 5% for the last 5 days while cpc simultaneously drops by 90%. I don't know what it is, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark

[Powdork]

additionally, the estimated earning at the top of the stats page is about 60% of the estimated earnings that they post as a result of adding search plus content together. things that make you go hmmmm...

[ember]

I think they are always tweaking and tinkering behind the scenes, always trying to improve things, and sites get caught in the experimentation. Doesn't mean anything nefarious is going on.

[Powdork]

i know, and fishy doesn't equal nefarious, just weird and strange. the income has remained fairly constant

[Play_Bach]

Nearly 5am here and all the clicks I've received so far are showing zero earnings. This seems to be a new pattern. Hopefully it's just a reporting delay and the zeros will get updated later, but I'm not expecting it. What's odd is that these zero clicks are all from the USA. Usually when I see zero value clicks, they're from countries like China or other non-English language regions. Anybody else seeing this?

[netmeg]

I've seen more over the past month or so. Not entirely sure why, as my traffic is mostly local, but in one case, I've been having performance issues on a site - it's running really slow and we're trying to figure out why - and I notice that a lot of times people click on links more than once because the site isn't responding as well as it should be, and I'm wondering now if people are clicking on ads more than once too, and Google is discounting that.

Of course, there's no way to know (other than fixing whatever the problem is)

[Play_Bach]

My earnings are jumping around again. For a moment when I clicked the Home link in my AdSense reports, it showed earnings at 3x of all day yesterday. Now that money is gone. :-(

The other thing that I'm seeing lots more of is the reports not loading when using my iPad. Instead, I frequently get this message:

"We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it."

[Powdork]

my clicks are now worth 1/4 of a penny. how awesome is that?

[R0meo]

my ctr has plumped by 30% today, yet cpc is still going strong (as strong as it gets these days)

[Lame_Wolf]

I am glad I am not the only one. With me having to block google images because of their unfair way of displaying them, and my host "upgrading" their servers (causing untold downtime and stress) my earnings do not cover the electricity for the PC. That is how bad things are.

[R0meo]

why would you block google images? Waste of traffic i would say ..

I know their layout redesign cost us a lost of images traffic, yet it is a workaround here. With simple tweak i managed to pull ~70% of my images traffic back to my website.

I used to get 15k/day from google images. After template change this number plumped to 1-2k.

So, i tweaked my images a bit and now pulling back ~10k/daily

[Lame_Wolf]

why would you block google images? Waste of traffic i would say ..

For some sites, yes, but when people visited, they viewed more than one page, clicked on adverts, or even purchased. But with Google allowing direct access to large images, I had no real choice. It is not a wordpress site, so I cannot use any of the plugins.

I know their layout redesign cost us a lost of images traffic, yet it is a workaround here. With simple tweak i managed to pull ~70% of my images traffic back to my website.

When it comes to .htaccess, Apache etc. then I would be the dumbest in a room full of dumb/lobotomized people.

I used to get 15k/day from google images. After template change this number plumped to 1-2k.

I'd go anything between 10-18k a day. Now 5k - and that includes people coming for the text pages.

So, i tweaked my images a bit and now pulling back ~10k/daily

:)

[Play_Bach]

All the zero value clicks I reported four hours ago now show amounts. Anybody else seeing lags like this?

[R0meo]

i just show blurred and faded pictures while in google.
and my pictures viewers are instructed "click this to see full HD quality" on the top of every picture.
Works like a charm.

[Lame_Wolf]

i just show blurred and faded pictures while in google.
and my pictures viewers are instructed "click this to see full HD quality" on the top of every picture.
Works like a charm.

That's the kind of thing I wanted to do, but I will have to remain a dimwit.

[breeks]

Earnings not matching traffic today. Report seems delayed. Was double earnings at the same time yesterday.

[jost]

"i just show blurred and faded pictures while in google.
and my pictures viewers are instructed "click this to see full HD quality" on the top of every picture.
Works like a charm. "


I did this too for some of my sites but people dont click through anyway. Traffic did not come back.

Germany and France stopped google from doing this, its illegal. Gee..... ya think? But in the US you can buy politcians or defend activity like this with enough attorneys so goggle just fu*Ks us.

[zork]

I thought it was just me, but clearly there are a ton of people experiencing this same issue. I will admit that the sites I'm running have zero search traffic and 100% social and referral, so it seems to me that I'm being Smart-Priced due to the traffic being less than ideal (although I thought social traffic was a only a notch below search, no?).

For me, the clicks come in and the earnings go up, then get adjusted down about 75-90% every time. I've watched it happen all day long since Easter Sunday. What I'm seeing is a huge drop at the start of Jan 2013 to March 31st, and now a huge drop from there at the start of April 2013. Seems to me that there are new algorithms being rolled out every quarter that are most likely attempting to benefit the advertisers in order to keep them from complaining about zero conversions from the content network and leaving Adwords altogether, which hurts Google, of course. The drawback is publishers don't get paid for placing ads on their sites.

I feel that this is unfair. My top 5 sites get around 10k uniques per day each and it's all real visitors as far as I can tell from my stats. If they aren't interested in buying after they click, that is the advertisers problem as I have already done my job by providing relevant visitors to relevant websites. Most advertisers have crappy landing pages and think that a click should convert which in actuality all the click means is that the user found the ad itself interesting enough to click. Since the publisher can't do anything about conversions on the backend of the ad, I don't think it's fair at all for publishers to get penalized. A bid is a bid and a click is a click. Obviously if clicks are coming from known bad IPs and referrers then those are breaking TOS, but someone in my position is simply serving ads on a high traffic site and essentially not getting paid for it. Smart-pricing is *NOT*, I repeat *NOT* a fair way to handle online advertising as it doesn't accurately reflect the bids of the advertisers nor the price that most publishers feel they should be paid. What it's doing is causing publishers to load their sites with more ads to compensate and it destroys the user experience. In this way, Google is totally destroying their advertising network on both sides.

Retargeting is yet another problem, especially in combination with Smart Pricing as it means the user will see irrelevant ads on their site even if it's relevant to them personally. Most people I know (and I poll a lot to get a good idea) are annoyed by seeing the same ad over and over and don't understand why they're seeing, say, a Best Buy ad on a dog training website. It may be good for branding since it reminds the user that Best Buy exists, but it's irrelevant and I'm willing to bet it causes smart-pricing in kick in since people aren't clicking on retargeted ads as much as relevant ads.

What I see happening in the near future is retargeting and smart pricing causing many people to leave adsense which is going to ultimately hurt Google since they'll end up with too little inventory in their publisher network.

If this keeps up, I will definitely be leaving Adsense myself. In the meantime, I'm attempting to replace Adsense ads with others on my low performing pages. At least I can make a little money from CPMs off other networks instead of zero.

Really upsetting..

</rant>

[Lame_Wolf]

+1 zork.

And welcome to WebmasterWorld

[JCKline]

Another odd day here. I suspect April is Google experimental month. Spring cleaning perhaps. Stats are just odd and unstable.

[netmeg]

The advertisers drive the bus, not the publishers. It is what it is. Google isn't in it to be fair to publishers.

[JCKline]

It's getting hot in here...

[zork]

Thanks Lame_Wolf :)

@netmeg, no, Google drives the bus, the adverts are just on for the ride. In fact, that is a poor analogy. It's more like Google is that scammy cab driver who takes the long way to your destination just to make more money and when you try to tell them where to go they pretend like they don't speak English.

[jost]

"Google isn't in it to be fair to publishers. "

Webmasters arent in it to be fair to google either.

Without us, google would have nothing to advertise on outside of their own sites.

The games they play with their algo's are rubbish. Its a rigged market.

The correlation between clicks and CPC is absurd.

When my clicks go up.... it instantly drives CPC down.
If clicks go down... CPC goes up.

This is NOT a bid/ask marketplace. Google estimates what it thinks your site should be getting in clicks and games the numbers to fit their formula.

I have billboards on the internet that I sell space on.
Problem is.... there is this middleman monopoly guy I have to work through. If people pay $X to advertise on my billboard and its doesnt convert the middleman steps in and takes back money. WTF?!? That is google.

As a billboard space seller, I want an ad agent that takes %X cut in return for managing my ad system. Oh yes, google does that,but also F's us with their secret algo's that determine prices instead of letting a bid be a bid.