September 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

What does AdSense have in store for us this month?

[JCKline]

September 1st, the new month begins. What ups and downs are waiting for us this month?

[Play_Bach]

Just checked text ads on my iPad. They look terrible! Not sure that's the reason people weren't clicking yesterday, but for now I've turned off Enhanced text ads to see what happens. Maybe one of these years AdSense will offer text ads like Google actually uses itself! Grrr.

[webcentric]

@Swanny007 et.al.

if this keeps up I'll have to turn off enhanced ads and see if it bounces back

I tried this to see what the visual difference is. The big problem is for me that G has remove underlining from the ad titles (across the board it seems) and the titles are so big they look like page headers, not links. You can get rid of the arrow and other enhanced features by turning off enhancements but the way G as mucked with the title takes away almost all visual clues as to the ad being something that is clickable (whether your using enhanced features or not). This is killing CTR and I think the chorus is about to get real loud.

[webcentric]

Surprisingly getting high ctr in all my sites which translates to very good above average earnings. Usually, I get this good earning in the beginning of November. This is quite early. I'm amazed!

Good for you. Glad you got that off your chest even if your lack of context provides no useful information whatsoever. Here, let me ad some more useless information to yours and see where it takes us. Yesterday was bad, the day before that worse, the day before that quite good, the day before that better and the day before that GREAT!. Ah, I see we have so much in common now. Never realized how good wallowing and/or gloating feels and I'm beginning to see why some use this thread for those purposes. Still, and call me a hopeless optimist, I hold onto the notion that conversation can actually have meaning and purpose.

[LuckyLiz]

We've seen higher CTR and earnings since AdSense started displaying ads with super large headlines on our sites.

What's a bit strange is that I'm seeing ads based on sites I've just visited even though we have interest-based ads turned off.

[webcentric]

We've seen higher CTR and earnings since AdSense started displaying ads with super large headlines on our sites

Are you seeing these results with any particular ad size? I've seen 160x600 skyscrapers 728x90 leaderboards both take a CTR nose dive in the past several days.

[breeks]

Maybe one of these years AdSense will offer text ads like Google actually uses itself

A very good point if these new style ads are so great why are we not seeing them on search results page?

[Chris13]

What's a bit strange is that I'm seeing ads based on sites I've just visited even though we have interest-based ads turned off. LuckyLiz

The interest-based ads setting for adsense doesn't mean what you think it means. It means that visits to your site will be included in generating interest-based ads for the people visiting your site so that when that person goes to other sites, google will use that information in generating ads for that person.

The interest-based ads setting does not mean that interest based ads will not be displayed in ad units on your site. You cannot keep interest-based ads from displaying on your site.

[Play_Bach]

@breeks

Well I'm not holding my breath for that to happen. I've been wanting it since day one and so far, the Plex has not seen fit to offer us the same text ads Google Search uses. Beats me why that is, but that's the facts.

[jbayabas]

My earnings today are through the roof. Very surprised that not many have similar results.

[explorador]

This month has been very nice, including the highest day of the year. Today is "ok", not as high as the rest but still fine.

[webcentric]

My earnings today are through the roof. Very surprised that not many have similar results.

Oh, do I miss some of the intelligent voices that once haunted these pages.

[jbayabas]

Good to hear that explorador. Looks like the happy publishers are just not reporting. Yesterday was my biggest earner yet.

[FourDegreez]

First half of Sept was a bit slow for me, second half doing quite well so far. ::fingers crossed:: Usually Sept-Oct isn't a high-performing time in my experience, and I'll see things pick up in November (Christmas shopping season, I suppose).

[jbayabas]

Same here, Four. The increase started on the second half of Sept. I can only imagine what my revenue will be in November which is my high performing month. Exciting!

[Jaideemaak]

I've also seen a BIG jump in CTR since the new super large font ads appeared. These ads only show the title and the rest of the ad appears when you mouse over. These ads look a lot better. They are very visible, but don't look as crowded as they did before. They seem to override the font size option that you can set.

I'm not exactly sure when they appeared, but halfway through the month September was on course to be my worst month since June 2012. It was looking dire. This sudden improvement means that I might salvage something reasonable this month after all.

Oct, Nov and Dec have been my best months for the last two years. If that trend continues, along with the help of the big font ads, the rest of 2013 should be good. Fingers crossed.

[SteveKuato]

Joined the forum to add my story.

Since September 18/19 my AdSense income (from mobile) has more than halved. It has not recovered.

I am a long term AdSense user and I can generally predict how much I will earn each day, so this is a very abnormal situation for me.

I also derive all my income from AdSense ($X,XXX each month) so this is devastating.

[webcentric]

Since September 18/19 my AdSense income (from mobile) has more than halved. It has not recovered.

You might be interested in these two threads if you're using text ads. The 18th/19th seem to be trigger dates.

[webmasterworld.com ]

[webmasterworld.com ]

[Swanny007]

My AdSense CTR dropped just shy of 10% as of Sept 18 and has stayed down, with RPM down about 8%. I can't help but think it's due to the new text ad design... still considering disabling enhanced text ads just for giggles...

[SteveKuato]

Thank you webcentric, your links are very useful!

Have any of you noticed the font sizes no longer do anything?

It seems I have no choice but to use a large font on my adverts - both the heading and body of the advert. No matter what font size I use I can't get anything to change.

[leanitup]

Same exact issue, Steve — my CTR and earnings dropped by nearly 50% on 9/19 because of this crap.

I, too, take in most of my income from Adsense ($X,XXX/mo).

I'm hoping it recovers, but I'm not holding my breathe — looking elsewhere at other networks.

[webcentric]

Have any of you noticed the font sizes no longer do anything?

Font size settings don't seem to work and now google seems to be enforcing a border around text ads (can't create a unit with the same border color as your page anymore). And rounded corners also don't seem to work. I'm pretty sure that some day (maybe after they've killed off a bunch of publishers), G will get around to changing the ad editing tools to match what options are left for us to choose from. And it doesn't look like they're done messing with things yet because the border color issue just appeared in the last day or so.

[jbayabas]

Still above average here for two weeks now. Thanks, Goog!

[frankleeceo]

Try a white border? It works for me on a lighter background page.

[webcentric]

@frankleeceo I'm getting a grey border with the border color set to white. Seems the border color now only controls the color of the arrow icon (small one in the upper right-hand corner, not the circle arrow). Anyway, seems G wants borders around all text ads now so "when in Rome..."

[MrSavage]

My party continues. To me, this is a plateau, an eye opener, an Adsense nirvana as it were. I realize it will end and was feeling depressed, but heck, it might end, but I'm going to enjoy each day of this. I have new hope that's for sure. I can't get into details, but I'm free in a sense. At the same time, I'm having record smashing days for earnings. Yes, it's hanging on one strand of a thread, but I'm okay with that. I know it can happen and for me, that's what I needed to feel. Did I mention I'm doing this all the while being "free"? W00t!

[frankleeceo]

@MrSavage

If I may ask, how much % boost did you get? Or if you would like to share the $ amount? ;p I want to be inspired.

[MrSavage]

Whelp, I suppose it's all relative. If you're a big earner now or were, remember the day(s) you woke up realizing that this was at a new earning level. A door opener. An eye opener. It's not as prestigious as many of the stellar publishers, but for me personally, it's as best I've done. Traffic boost has made this happen. Nothing more than that. I guess I'm beating around the bush on the answer. I think I could best describe this as an eye opener or a new plateau of expectations and hope. I've always said there would be no better lifestyle than by earning enough via Adsense. I'm only on a single strand of thread, but it does make me realize how the other half lives. Again, I'm small fry in comparison to the heavy hitters, but to the average Adsense publisher, I'm juiced. I rarely am able to post positives which is why I'm especially juiced. I'm a realist though but I'm better for this experience for however long it lasts.

[frankleeceo]

Well thanks for answering haha. Yeah it's always that pleasant surprise when earning or traffic gets boosted to a new plateau.

Although you gotta be more positive and work harder to maintain that level. Last year I thought the same thing when I hit my traffic spike during the summer. I became complacent and kinda stopped working as hard as I could, and earning dropped to a new low come the year round when Google took it away.

What I have experienced is that after my "spike" my earning has gone down considerably. I am working extra hard to maintain a plateau and waiting for the next wave.

It's a long wait and it's exciting to see another break it through. It's hard to get motivated myself personally seeing the same numbers or lower numbers at days in and out.

At the moment I am riding a downtrend but hoping for a nice boost come November/December shopping and winter break season. One can only hope for the best in the current environment.

Kinda reminds me of playing poker, whilst this business do give better odds and ROI.

[Play_Bach]

Dead all day.

[jbayabas]

Record breaking day for me on Friday. Thanks, Goog!