October 2013 AdSense Earnings and Observations

Haunting Tales of AdSense That Would Spook Any Webmaster!

[JCKline]

Good bye September! What will October bring? Ups, downs, and everything in-between...

[ember]

poopie

Thank you for the laugh. Sorry, though, that things are slow for you.

Good day today, even with everyone watching football.

[icedowl]

Good thing laughs are free! Anyway, I just had a click dump and things aren't so poopie anymore.

[JCKline]

Things have just died the last two days

[JCKline]

Still dead all day. Lowest numbers I've ever seen. WTF is going on G!

[webcentric]

Still dead all day. Lowest numbers I've ever seen. WTF is going on...

Weak auction = lot's of irrelevant ads = CTR in the toilet.

Reasons?

Government shutdown + second week of the month + beginning of a new quarter + end of the travel season + school is back in session + holiday season not quite officially underway = advertisers waiting for the right moment to pull the end-of-year trigger. Fact is, government shutdown and impending debt ceiling aside, most advertisers are gonna have to loosen the purse strings eventually or risk a disaster this holiday season. Question is, will they be firing with both barrels (and when) or will marketers maintain a cautious approach with their dollars this season?

Oh and let's not forget that G is completely screwing with their advertising platform right now so pick your poison. Perhaps the Federal government and Google are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the global economy. Makes as much sense as any other theory I've heard in awhile.

[nomis5]

Perhaps the Federal government and Google are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy the global economy.

We in the UK are doing our bit to that end as well. Government backed 95% mortgages because the mortgage companies won't lend that much on their own backs.

If you are in the home improvement / repossession / bankruptcy areas then your Adsense earnings will do well. Other than that, UK government imposed Armageddon will wreck even your best laid plans.

We have learned nothing from the housing collapse in the US. Even that is dwarfed into a minor blip compared to the collapse in prices we have seen in Spain, Greece, Portugal and others.

[webcentric]

I sense an Adsense update in the works. Stats are completely stuck (clicks and pageviews) which as of late seems to be a precursor to an update in the system. Wonder what's in store for today?

[karkadan]

dead, frozen

[Ammalgam]

dead, frozen

[explorador]

September was fine, quite well, amazing compared to the rest of 2013.

October looks promising, but I have to joing the team: today has been SLOW and low, the whole mornin was frozen, dead.

[Frost_Angel]

Morning was totally frozen - then it seemed to update - but now it just seems weird low. Not typical of the steadiness I usually see.

[webcentric]

As anticipated, G rolled out updates in Analytics today and the rollout is almost certainly responsible for stats freezing up in Adsense. It's fairly obvious that as G further integrates the two reporting systems, that rollouts in one have an impact on the other (hence the stuck stats). The whole concept of stuck stats (truly stuck) is becoming a pretty dependable precursor to software rollouts in either Adsense or Analytics or both. Today's rollout seems to be related to a section of Analytics labeled "Acquisition." Not sure if this is entirely new but there are new components in that area. Something worth checking out perhaps?

p.s. I know there's a stuck thread now but this note is a follow up to a previous post in this thread made before the stuck thread appeared.

[explorador]

I read about the algo release
things were different yesterday: back to lower numbers
not as low as the rest of 2013 but low
yesterday was totally SLOW even frozen
the end of the day wasn't that bad but still: low

Today doesn't look good judging by the numbers and the hour of the day

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday never recovered. No click dump for me. :-(

[greatstart]

This is the worst month ever. After many years running AdSense, I think this will be my last year using it. It's just not worth having anymore.

[explorador]

Ok, something is wrong, by this time of the day I should be somewhere else.

96 cents? come on, this is a huge red flag, yesterday was not good but today... 96 cents? what? whaaat?

[Slashus]

My AdSense earnings have been off the hook (good) since whatever the latest nessie change happened. Too bad Google killed all my traffic over the last 24 months to about 15% of where it was.

[explorador]

Ok, it just moved, a nice jump, it was just stuck and frozen.

[Play_Bach]

Yesterday ad requests were the highest all month by a wide margin, yet CTR was the lowest? Sure AdSense, whatever you say. :-|

[chokko]

Adsense has been about 60 % lower... CPC is dismal... Not sure what to do

[JCKline]

Things are still a mess. Ststs just don't add up and everything is dismal again. Days of the red bar telling us not to worry, earnings are being counted, then no recovery day after day.

[smashing]

Hi guys, first post...

We do six figure impressions a day, monetized primarily through Adsense but also other networks. We've been at this for 9 years and our operation is well honed. I say this only for authenticity.

Like many we've been through the ringer with Adsense. Our operation is white hat, yet we've suffered the same disabled accounts, arbitrary deductions of earnings (one month was 5 figures and 90% of finalized earnings), as others. We work extremely hard to stay within GA's policies - suffice to say.

After the across the board hit of July 2nd (50% in our case), things had gradually moved back up through August and went ballistic beginning Sep 14th. Our peak on Sep 27th was 400% higher than July 2nd. We were planning a good Xmas.

October for us is better than September, but on Oct 4th it came crashing down to the point where we're seeing CPC's that are 80-90% lower on many of our more profitable ad units than a week ago.

We've reached out to Adsense and as usual it's the same story - little actionable information or any kind of useful dialogue.

I realize many here may view this as the whinings of a 'landowner' - but I thought I'd throw it out there if only to show that it doesn't really matter where you fit into Google's publisher network - there be very little security when you are stuck on the Google juice.

[breeks]

Yesterday had 20% more traffic than the previous day and AdSense earnings were down 40% from previous day.

On a bright note one affiliate program I'm in is coming close and on some days exceeding AdSense earnings.

Biggest drop I see is the 160x600 ad units. CTR is about half of what it used to be since the new design.

336x280 and 300x250 CTR is up but not enough to cover loss on 160x600

[webcentric]

Biggest drop I see is the 160x600 ad units.

Same assessment here and I've seen others make similar comments. I've actually removed these units and replaced them with smaller units which are holding up their end for the moment.

Spent quite a bit of time focusing on leaderboards recently and think I'm starting to get a handle on how to use them to some degree of effectiveness. They took a CTR nose dive in the early days of this roll-out but they're performing better after several rounds of tweaking. Not sure if I'm gonna go back and do the same with the skyscrapers or not but probably will at some point just to see if there are some opportunities being missed there.

[explorador]

Low, slow and stuck, then not so much.

I had a terrible low (96 cents) for almost the whole day (not today) but then at 23pm earnings whent up to the usual of september (good numbers) and it's been like that since 9 oct. Weird. I don't mind the numbers during the day as long as they are not low numbers at the end of the day.

[JCKline]

Still bad here. CTR is way up today, CPC is so low it makes no difference.

[breeks]

Looking back one year. Traffic is up 36% vs same 30 day period 2012, while revenue from Adsense is down 16%. CTR rate seems to be the main problem.

[JCKline]

It seems that every time CTR is up, CPC is down, and visa-verse. I find it hard to believe that lower paying ads are more attractive. The other thing I'm perplexed about is when the text ad style changed, the CTR was up for 5 days, then dropped lower than what it was before the changes. How can they be more entising, then suddenly not. Hmmm

Another note, after two days of the red bar reporting delats, every hit rock bottom...why?

[ember]

the CTR was up for 5 days, then dropped lower than what it was before the changes

That is the exact same thing that happened to me. Steady ctr for months. Then really high for five days when the new ads appeared. Then the ctr tanked and since then, the ctr is lower than it's ever been. What happened during those five days?

[breeks]

What happened during those five days

The ads were new and visitors were curious, now they realize they are just ads.