Google AdSense Revenue Down, And Ads Not Matching Site Content

[egem44]

Ok, this is crazy. I've been with adsense for over 5 years. I run one large site that is about writing and publishing. We are down 50% in rev from last year at this time and down 25% from last month. I haven't seen numbers this low since 2010. There is also all kinds of crazy behavior. The ads are not matching the content. Some ads are junk. The settings in adsense do not match what is showing up on the site. Set to no interests based ads, still showing them. We are also getting those "download this" buttons and all kinds of other crazy behavior. The impression are 1/2 of what they were but our numbers are showing we are double the visitors from last year.

I have a security company that has scanned the site to make sure no malware or other tech is causing the problems. Anyone seeing this kind of behavior from their sites? I'm seeing ads that have nothing to do with the content, and nothing to do with what I have ever searched for. Any ideas?

Also changed some of the locations of ads to make sure they are not by drop down menus. This hasn't been a problem in the past, and I was very careful in the first place. We've removed anything that would even come close to that like "share this." They were not covering ads. Nothing seems to help. Any ideas or comments please...

[littlecubpanda]

All you have to do to know if interest-based ads are a problem is to look at the metrics in your account. For the past month, IBAs vs. contextual varying by a couple of cents on RPM for me. They're so close.

Just check in your account and you'll know right away if they are dragging you down.

@ Egem44

With respect to Full Sail, that's a good point. 99% of people never click on their ads, but 99% of people who SEE the ads remember who they are. Everyone now knows who Full Sail is without clicking on a single ad.

That's why I have all image-based ads disabled. Text ads require the user to inquire further to know what the ad is about. Image-based ads give everything away.

[jojy]

That's why I have all image-based ads disabled. Text ads require the user to inquire further to know what the ad is about. Image-based ads give everything away.

I did that one year ago but I haven't seen any significant improvement. Do you care to share your experience on text ads i.e. CTR, revenue%, niche, etc.?

[carminejg3]

Has anyone seen improvement in earning by disabling third party or interest based ads? I disabled interest based ads few months ago but Google was still showing me same ads but from third party. It seems like Google disabled interest based ads on their side but not from third party ad networks.

I tried it for a week. What I noticed is ctr went up about .5% cpc went down by 40%... so I was getting more clicks, but less money per click. In goggles advice to publishers is simple. If we allow Google to decide, and leave every thing open it enables them to push up the price per click, because say im looking at web hosting and maybe refinancing my mortgage, then im looking for a new collar for my puppy.

The auction ads will say, puppy collar pays .25 per click, and he might click this $4 mortgage ad, so if we show it to him all night he might click it this increasing earnings by 16 times. This it might also make the puppy collar advertiser to raise his click rate from .25 to .50.

So in the end i hate not having ads match my pages, but... I understand Google has a lot of data, and in the end they get a piece, so its in their best interest to get people to click ads.

[carminejg3]

jojy. I tend to disable image ads, even though i know it effects my cpc, because i use google ads within text, and the image ads kills the page, so I'll take the hit for a better click.

I do agree with an early post about going to a subscription model. We as publishers need to look into other options, and we cant run a website with little to no ads, especially if they want it to be fast and updated. In my option Im working towards a search engine free economy where any serp traffic becomes a bonus.

[explorador]

It's all related to the thread:

I'm working into developing a rotating advertising space on my network of sites for business because, even that I understand the GAdsense Model, I'm giving away a lot of free ad impressions. Some biz models contemplate brand positioning, not only "clicking on the ads"

[carminejg3]

I agree when you are getting less then 5% ctr on anything its free. I was going to use a php script to show my ad 20% of the time lol. figured i might lose some clicks, but if the ads weren't there 4-5th the time maybe the would get clicked.

Someone else is right, that i did see a minimum ad spend of $50,000 on one of the other ad networks where i give google credit is they take your $10 bucks if you want to roll the die with adwords.

[Chris13]

egem44,

A lot of publishers are seeing the exact same thing as you. For me it has nothing to do with sources of traffic either. I do zero link building and my traffic either comes from search engines or returning visitors.

Set to no interests based ads, still showing them.

Btw, I queried this with adsense tech support. The setting doesn't mean what you think. It doesn't turn off interest based ads. Here's the exact answer I got to that question.

You can opt out of showing ads that are based on user interest and demographic categories (for example, 'sports enthusiasts' or 'inferred age: 18-34'). In turn, Google will not use visitation information from your sites to help create interest and demographic categories. However, you cannot opt out of showing ads to users based on their previous interactions with the advertiser, such as visits to an advertiser's website.

While Netmeg is having good results with adsense, and I'm sure there are many others who are as well, many are not and there's no real explanation coming from google.

I believe that Netmeg has reduced the number of adunits adsense is getting and replaced those with direct sold ads. That would explain the higher CPC because of the way adwords bidding works.

I went a slightly different route. I cut the number adunits I give adsense and replaced them with media.net ads. Less pay = less leased space received. I'm planning some direct ad sales later this year.

[carminejg3]

Nice quote chris. I also minimize the ad units per page against the adsense teams suggestions. if you only have one unit you create a bidding war, if you use 3 units and have 12 spots, less bidding needed to make the page

[netmeg]

I have three ad units on most of my long pages, but one of them rotates with direct ads.

[Chris13]

Netmeg, thank you for the data.

[egem44]

A lot of people have been complaining about these download this ads, and I was wondering why they were even showing up on my site. I have blocked them now, but I think, from what I'm seeing, maybe image and multimedia ads are being placed first before other ads. This is why I'm seeing unrelated content. I think it's going for high click value over relevant ads. I went through my ad center and blocked all the ads that were not relevant, and I noticed a lack of multimedia ads in my website niche. Weird.

chris and carminejg2 are you seeing good results with less ads?

[Chris13]

are you seeing good results with less ads?

From Adsense combined with Media? Yes in that overall revenue is rising. Media over took adsense last week after being on the site since mid-May. It took awhile for Media to outperform Adsense, but now that it is I'm happy I stuck with it. The two sources together makes for more stable income.

I've returned to expanding my site.

[littlecubpanda]

joyj:

My CTR is bad to begin with, since I sell nothing on my sites.

Text ads HUGELY out perform image ads...

But it may be time for an experiment. Though, I'm fairly happy with my avg CPC. It may not be bad enough to rock the boat, yet.

[egem44]

Are you using Media on the same page as adsense? I'm just wondering. I've used them, but I haven't seen any earnings. They have such a low return, just like infolinks and kontera. I'm wondering though, if over time if you have seen those earnings rise?

As for adsense, my ads are back to normal, I'm not seeing crazy unrelated ads, but the earnings are still just dragging. I'm down 80% at least. It's making me sick. I'm trying to just go on and keep building the site better and better, but it's difficult not to keep trying to tweak things to see if there is a change. I've gone through about 200 pages and made sure that none of my ads were by menus or covered by lightboxes or anything like that. It's very painful right now.

[Chris13]

Are you using Media on the same page as adsense?

Yes. It took some time for them to start producing. I put them in adunits where adsense was giving me the lowest cpc. Media seems to require more time to tune to a site. I give Media less adunits than adsense, but it's producing more on most days.

[jojy]

Switched to text ads two ago now revenue down up to 30%. I am hoping it will get better on week days.

[System]

The following message was cut out to new thread by martinibuster. New thread at: google_adsense/4614076.htm [webmasterworld.com]
3:21 am on Oct 5, 2013 (utc -8)

[edited by: martinibuster at 11:24 am (utc) on Oct 5, 2013]

[indyank]

I just happened to read this thread as I am also hearing a lot of noise on declining adsense revenues.

I read with interest, netmeg's take on interest based ads but my personal experiences suggest interest based ads aren't as good as relevant ads.Yes, google is finding ways to show interest based ads on all partner websites. Note they still maintain relevancy when it comes to ads on their own platforms like Google SERPS. If interest based ads were so good, they would have done away with relevancy there but nope, they seem to be doing it only on adsense publisher partner websites.

But then I also get a feel that there is something similar to panda released in adsense algos as well....

[indyank]

I just happened to read this thread as I am also hearing a lot of noise on declining adsense revenues.

I read with interest, netmeg's take on interest based ads but my personal experiences suggest interest based ads aren't as good as relevant ads.Yes, google is finding ways to show interest based ads on all partner websites. Note they still maintain relevancy when it comes to ads on their own platforms like Google SERPS. If interest based ads were so good, they would have done away with relevancy there but nope, they seem to be doing it only on adsense publisher partner websites.

But then I also get the feeling that there is something similar to panda released in adsense algos as well....

[kimbodude]

it may or may not have been said already, but you should consider looking to desktop vs mobile revenue. Allot of people turn mobile now and you should test the site on mobile devices which can lead to a drop in CTR if they are not positioned correctly.

[avalon37]

Interest based ads for me YTD have almost exactly the same average RPM earnings as contextual. However, each month for interest based ads has been up and down whereas my contextual performance is very consistent month over month.

[greatstart]

Part of the problem is the new ad format and the other problem I am seeing are the ads are not relevant with my site content. Than would explain the huge drop in CTR the past couple of months.

[indyank]

They wouldm't be relevant and AFAIK Google is just showing interest based ads to your visitors (interests they get to know by tracking their browsing behaviour). If you are looking for contextual ads (or relevant ads as I too call it), they just appear on their search engine platform and not anymore on their adsense partner sites.In fact most would only see relevant ads on their search engine platform and not interest based ads.Relevant ads seem to be exclusively reserved for their SERPS for the past few years.

[indyank]

Do any of you know how to show only contextual or relevant ads to visitors of our web properties? Is this possible on third party websites?

[netmeg]

Some of my ads are definitely contextual; I'm pretty sure they serve a mix.

[indyank]

1) There are chances your interests and the content of your site matches.

Almost all of the ads shown to me on my sites are those based on other sites that i visited in the previous 2-4 weeks.

2) I have never seen google showing me interest based ads on Google SERPS. The ads are always relevant to the query. Has anyone ever seen interest based ads on Google SERPS?

[netmeg]

There are chances your interests and the content of your site matches.

No, not really.

Here's the thing, and you really have to be participating on the advertising side to get this. There's not just "interest based advertising" anymore, ok? There's advertising in the display network that's based on categories of interest that the advertiser specifically targets. There's interest based advertising based on what Google thinks you might be interested in. There's retargeting or remarketing ads, where you see ads after you visit a particular website or perform some action that the advertiser defines. There's probably a couple more I am forgetting at the moment. Some of these take place only on the display network, and some take place on display AND search.

This is one of the reasons why it doesn't really scan to just say "I don't want interest based ads on my site" - we're already WAY past that now.

You just can't keep up with what's going on with AdSense unless you keep up with AdWords. (And that's pretty much a full time job in itself)

[eeek]

AdSense is what it is, and it's not likely to change

Really? I find that it changes a lot. But most of the changes are making things worse. Currently ad targeting is mostly used food (e.g. Herpes Dating on my ARM Linux Kernel pages) and that's making CTR and CTC really bad. In other words: Google needs to fix its bugs!

[indyank]

I have never seen google showing me interest based ads on Google SERPS.

here's interest based advertising based on what Google thinks you might be interested in. There's retargeting or remarketing ads, where you see ads after you visit a particular website or perform some action that the advertiser defines. There's probably a couple more I am forgetting at the moment.

yes I generalized them as interest based ads (retargeting or remarketing and other ads).

do you see any of them on their SERPS. I have never come across anything other than contextual ads on their SERPS i.e. ads relevant to the query.

[netmeg]

You can do remarketing on search (obviously text ads only). More complicated remarketing, like where you tie it to a product feed and actually show the user what he looked at on your site obviously has to be display. I believe Google can target your interests on search, but advertisers can only target interests/categories on display.