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...

[netmeg]

Obviously if they're giving away free advertising it means they'll have to take earnings away from publishers, yea?

No, not obviously, that's not how it works (again - get to know AdWords before you jump to conclusions) They're *always* giving out free AdWords cards; I have twenty or thirty of them on my desk this minute - they send them out like they were AOL disks. And they have nothing to do with AdSense, if an advertiser uses them (and they're only good for NEW Advertiser accounts) the publisher still gets paid. And they're only good for $50 or $100 anyway. Google pays that.

[zork]

And they have nothing to do with AdSense, if an advertiser uses them the publisher still gets paid. Google pays that.

Source? Cuz I just don't believe that. A company as shady as Google is to their publishers, we barely ever see any transparency from the Adsense team.

I'm not jumping to conclusions either, I specifically said it was only a theory, duh (do you even read my posts before quoting me?).

[Play_Bach]

Another day in the dumps.

[R0meo]

gosh, some of you are senior members, and i find it very surprising how you can be so naive believing in everything google says in their tos, press statements etc.



its never like this for companies which are after money ONLY.

especially for those which already own half of the globe.

[jpch]

they send them out like they were AOL disks

I haven't gotten an AOL Disc in recent memory but have gotten Free AdWords cards. Thanks for the memory of getting an AOL Disc in the mail.

[ember]

Source? Cuz I just don't believe that. A company as shady as Google is to their publishers, we barely ever see any transparency from the Adsense team.

They aren't shady. They are a huge company running a business and looking out for their shareholders. I, for one, am doing better with Adsense than I have since I started with them in 2003. The Adsense team contacts me fairly regularly. I ask questions, and they answer them.

Maybe we should go back to the days when there was no Adsense?

[jinxed]

Earnings have tanked over the last 3 days, traffic up. Not complaining though, it is what it is

[jinxed]

Earnings have tanked over the last 3 days, traffic up. Not complaining though, it is what it is

[jmccormac]

Earnings for the last few days have been an absolute joke.

Regards...jmcc

[jinxed]

I'm pretty confident there is some sort of backlog for click processing, but maybe that's being too optimistic. Either way it's out of our control

[HuskyPup]

its never like this for companies which are after money ONLY.

especially for those which already own half of the globe.

I just "love" over the top exaggerations:-)

[jmccormac]

Nothing today so far and the business day here is almost half over. They must be working on their algorithms again or drooling over the new gTLD applications.

Regards...jmcc

[Play_Bach]

It's official! AdSense has completely tanked for my account. April 8th earnings go down in the books as my #2 lowest earnings EVER. That's a record AdSense low I never thought I'd see in 2013.

Checking out the Google AdSense Forum shows a lot of threads by people experiencing the same massive drop, so maybe (hopefully!) this is some major reporting mishap that will get straightened out. If not, well it's been nice knowing you!

[jmccormac]

Just reading around and apparently there is some faffing about with the Adsense for Youtube being split to Youtube analytics. Looks like another fine mess from the Adsense people. Earnings still dead today.

Regards...jmcc

[JCKline]

Recovery...where are you?

[jmccormac]

Recovery...where are you?

Probably awaiting a stimulus. Dear Leader Larry is busy looking for it with his Google Glasses but Google hasn't indexed it yet. :) The Youtube thing could be the main cause of the latest screwup.

Regards...jmcc

[JCKline]

The Youtube thing could be the main cause of the latest screwup.

Quite possibly. Strange things started that same day...

[breeks]

Best day of the month followed by the worst day of the month. 60% drop.
Today looks slightly better so far.

[IanCP]

@Play_Bach

That's a record AdSense low

Question?

Is the problem with AdSense itself? OR, Is it a traffic problem? OR a combination of both?

[Play_Bach]

@IanCP - In my case, I'd say it's all AdSense. Though my traffic has been hit hard by Google's algorithm changes, the numbers are still up enough that I can tell this is on AdSense's end. Don't know what they're up to, but so far April has been a disaster.

[HuskyPup]

Tuesday ended up precisely as expected since it had been garbage all day long, I'm sure as hell glad I do not rely on AdSense for an income!

Anyway, I reckon they have a data collection problem, once again this morning AdSense froze my browser for a full 30 seconds before it would allow me to log-in.

If it does that to bona fide AdSense publishers what's it doing when it tries to collect data from crappy landing pages that do not even render?

[avalon37]

Still a good month for me so far, but stats/earnings are more delayed than ever this month.

[jost]

Has any conclusion been drawn for the huge CTR drop?

Its not the arrows thing, because many of my sites never had the arrows to begin with and they all suffered this huge CTR drop.

Its not the image traffic either, that shouldnt effect CTR at all.

So what is it?

The only real change I saw is that the AD's become untargeted *and* they would serve so slow on some of my sites that the user likely clicked away from seeing the AD at all.

[netmeg]

We don't have any information, so I don't think we can come to any conclusion. My CTR is up and down, but never as high as it used to be. On the other hand, my familiar summertime advertisers are only just now starting to roll out.

[Chapman]

@jost

The CTR thing has me concerned as well. Traffic has been fantastic all year but March brought only about 30% of my average CTR. So far this month it appears to be improving and I've seen it slowly rise to 60% of average.

I concurr with the ads being VERY untargeted (no matter how much blocking I do through any of the tools) but have not witnessed the slow serving syndrome.

[Slashus]

Had click dump Tuesday evening. Brought up to just under rolling 30 day average. Thanks AdSense for giving the new bright red notice that stats might not be right all day. Not.

[HuskyPup]

Its not the image traffic either, that shouldnt effect CTR at all.

I have to disagree there since most of my sites are highly image based. My recent CTR is actually up BUT that is due to the fact that my image views in my trade directory are way, way down by about 65% over the past two years. Obviously overall earnings are down massively since total traffic and click volumes are down.

On my B&M specialist sites some were hit by the end of January update by 60-70%, why? They're my exclusive images, nothing has changed yet bang, I'm hit by their so-called 1.2% of queries which turns out to be hundreds of pages a day each for these niche widget sites.

I have to agree that I have seen some very off-target ads recently plus some ads seem to be constantly there to the almost exclusion of all others in a 728 x 90, that sure as heck won't encourage clicking.

[JCKline]

Yesterday was a mess. Just when I think it can't get any worse...it does.

[Play_Bach]

> Just when I think it can't get any worse...it does.

Agreed. April has been one of the weirdest AdSense months I've ever seen. There appears to be no rhyme or reason why my reports look the way they do. Wide swings in click counts and earnings now the norm. Crazy.

[JCKline]

Out of desperation, I've decided to allow all sensitive ads on one of my sites excluding gambling to see what happens.