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...

[edinburgher]

So far my reaction to April earnings involves the words "game of soldiers".

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday was a dud. Today is looking like it might be even worse.

[zarathustra2011]

January, February, March, no problem! April's a disaster!

[breeks]

"AdSense Gone Wild" today CPC and CTR through the roof.

Holding at over a buck a click and triple normal CTR.

This means tomorrow will be the worst day in years, if it follows the usual roller coaster stats.

[JCKline]

Yesterdays stats were shockingly poor! WTF happend. Today looks no better, so I decided to take some adsense advice I received from a real adsense employee. I only allow 2 ads per page, some only one. They reminded me that if the same ad size is used more than once on the same page, the second ad shows a lower bidder, so diversify. So lets say you run three ads, use the top 3 ad sizes so each ad shows the highest bidder for that ad size. I'm trying it with two ads, and if it improves, maybe a third on pages that won't look spammy.

[Saffron]

That's interesting, I didn't know that. What about similar sized ads?

I have one near the top and one at the bottom. I find the bottom is by far the best performing ad for me. They get to the end of the article and click.

[JCKline]

@Saffron, the top ad if clicked should pay more, according to the advice. so place a different ad size at the bottom or top if you can.

[JCKline]

OK, I made sure there are none of the same ad sizes in a page, and no new clicks yet, however, I'm receiving more PPI revenue. Hmmm...

[Saffron]

One thing I noticed was that the bottom ad, which is 336 x 250 was only showing one ad. I wanted it to show four. Didn't matter what I did, it would only show one ad. Then I was fiddling yesterday and removed a link unit I have & voila, four ads now showing with the bottom ad unit.

My ads performance wise are bottom, side & then top. Bottom outperforms the second in line (left) by 4 times.

I just make no money because my visitors have dropped by 30% since January. Thanks Google.

[garyr_h]

For the past couple of weeks my website has one unit displaying German ads and the rest are in English. There's a couple of pages which have German on it (although it also has the translation), but the only thing I can figure out why it would bother to show German ads throughout the site is some sort of personalization to me because my name is German (although I am American). I haven't searched for anything in German for probably 5 years or anything to do with Germany for the same amount of time.

It's very, very weird.

[netmeg]

That's one I'd send to support.

[azlinda]

I'm getting a lot of Spanish ads showing on my site. First time this has ever happened.

[glitterball]

@ garyr_h & azlinda

I've been thinking along the same lines - I offer some of my sites in 2 and 3 languages and up to yesterday, I was using the same ad units for multiple languages.

Yesterday, I created entirely new ad units across the board with distinct units for each language. I'll let you know if it makes any difference.

[Play_Bach]

Well surprise, surprise. Yesterday earnings back up, second best day all month! I'm hoping there's still more to come, as April 5, 8 and 11 were so way off the mark that I can't help but think that those days reports were in error somehow. What a weird month April has been!

[Swanny007]

I don't normally post in these threads but my year has been very consistent except for April. I saw Play_Bach's post about a few days being "off".

All days were "normal" except for April 5, 7, 9, 10, 12-14 for me. On those days earnings were down 10-15% compared to average. Traffic is steady but for some unknown reason earnings are not. I'm not sure if it's related to DDOS attacks (I'm not running WordPress). I guess we'll see what shakes out this April... hopefully things straighten out and go back to consistent Q1 earnings levels.

[JCKline]

Yesterday was as bad as Friday...mere pennies. JUST BROKEN!

[Play_Bach]

AdSense giveth, AdSense taketh away. Just had 5 clicks go to zero $. :-(

[JCKline]

For me: AdSense won't giveth, so AdSense can't taketh away.

[scotland]

An AdSense advert has been following me around for over a month - based on a software website I visited ... the thing is I bought the software, it has been delivered and installed and Google AdSense is still showing adverts for the same product as twice the cost I paid for it (I purchased direct from an e-mail advert sent by the software company to me).

I think Google is not doing anyone any favours tracking visitor web history - it should stick to content based adverts, based solely on the web page content and be relevant to that and nothing else, which would I believe have a far higher success for click through rates, and also not freak out web visitors with adverts that they know involves tracking their web history and shopping behaviour.

And yes I do agree AdSense is broken for publishers. Google do continue to make money especially on mobile devices such as 7" tablets where the whole page is made up of Google AdSense adverts above the fold, you need to scroll down a whole page to see any content and then you only get what Google want to show you, often links to more Google "content" pages.

Bring back the good old days of 2009

[Play_Bach]

> Bring back the good old days of 2009

+1 scotland

AdSense 2009 was my best year, been downhill ever since.

[breeks]

+2 Scotland

Google also has no problem showing ads with misleading titles that take your visitors to irrelevant websites that have nothing to do with the ad title.

[jmccormac]

This IBA thing really needs to be sorted out. I'm still seeing adverts for a site that I had mentioned last month. If the people in Google can't figure out that their IBA system is fundamentally flawed (it cannot tell if a purchase has been made or interest has been lost) then they should really just concentrate on contextual adverts and limit the timespan on IBAs.

Regards...jmcc

[glitterball]

Agree totally with the sentiments against the IBAs - oh, and please display Ads in the same language as the webpage (or at least the browser language).

[Mentat]

THis month = FUBAR...
Now eCPM is rising, but the used page views are lower every day => less money every day!

[Play_Bach]

11:55pm here, never recovered. :-(

[netmeg]

it cannot tell if a purchase has been made or interest has been lost

Once again - THAT'S NOT GOOGLE, THAT'S THE ADVERTISER. I don't mean to yell, but you gotta understand the system if you wanna understand the system, ya know?

How would Google know you bought the product? Do you WANT Google to know everything you're buying online, so they no longer show you ads for it? Really?

[jmccormac]

Once again - THAT'S NOT GOOGLE, THAT'S THE ADVERTISER. I don't mean to yell, but you gotta understand the system if you wanna understand the system, ya know?

How would Google know you bought the product? Do you WANT Google to know everything you're buying online, so they no longer show you ads for it? Really?

It is a fundamental flaw in Google's IBA. Shouting doesn't change the flaw. It is not a closed loop. Interest based advertising uses the browser's history (there is an option to allow or disallow third party advertisers to use such data) to target advertising. IBA, as a model, is broken unless that critical feedback loop exists. It doesn't.

Regards...jmcc

[netmeg]

This doesn't sound like IBA, it sounds like retargeting. They are not the same things. It doesn't work on browser history, it works on a cookie.

[support.google.com...]

[breeks]

You have to delete cookies and browser history to stop the ads following you around. Unfortunately the average web user only does this when they buy a new computer or other device that connects to the internet.

IBA ads must make more money for Google or they would show them, and as everyone knows Google is all about making money.

Adsense publishers are like pesky little flies than steal a tiny little bit food off Google's plate and they have a big fly swatter to deal with us. Sooner or later you're going to get swatted.

[IanCP]

IBA's follow me around months after I've searched on AND purchased on eBay.

Doesn't eBay give them a BIG CLUE?