If my earnings drop any further, I'll be paying Google

Trending down, down, down for months. Help!

[ShayneB]

I have a pretty active partisan political news and commentary website with roughly 300k monthly views. Political sites are notoriously hard for Adsense to target, so taking that into account, here's what's been happening:

Since roughly December, our Adsense numbers have been trending down, down, down like an anvil tied to a lead balloon. Comparing this month to date to the same period one year ago, our CTR has fallen -2.94%, our CPC has fallen -.61, and our RPM has fallen a whopping -$31.71. And to boot, one year ago our ads weren't targeted and we were running default Google colors. Now our ads are targeted, and our colors are blended, having a/b'd the blended against the default colors. I have since continually a/b'd various blues for the link color, as well as other color schemes in an effort to further refine our ads and squeeze out all I can. I've also blocked the last four options under display ads, because we had been getting eaten alive by five cents a click CPE ads to the tune of almost 50% of our daily clicks. I made that adjustment a week ago but so far the needle has barely moved up. I also blocked the URLs and individual ads from political ads that are opposite our viewpoint. And I removed our lowest performing sidebar ad. We now just have two 336x280 ad blocks, the same as last year, both within the actual articles--one centered above the first paragraph and one centered between paragraphs roughly midway down on articles over 500 words (it doesn't show on articles under 500 words).

To say that I'm in a panic at this point is a monumental understatement. I'm really at my wit's end, and I'm to the point where I'm second guessing everything. Normally I would blame a rough patch on content and start my evaluation there, but our content has remained quite consistent. And on top of that, I'm closely associated with three other sites who run content almost identical to my site, and while they have seen a drop this spring, they have experienced nothing remotely close to what I'm going through.

Is it possible that because my page is politically one-sided that targeting my ads has actually hurt me by driving away some advertisers? Any sound advice would be immensely appreciated.

[not2easy]

Hi ShayneB, welcome to the Forums. 2 Questions - is your site mobile friendly? Have you tried the new responsive "auto" size ads yet?

Wait - one more: There are a few discussions in this forum you might see similar discussions for your issues, have you read some of those that share experiences others are seeing? Sometimes it helps to compare notes.

[netmeg]

Is your traffic the same, and does it come from the same mix of sources and keywords (to the degree that you can tell)? It kind of sounds like smart pricing, and that usually happens when there's an issue with traffic quality.

Do you see pretty much the same advertisers?

[martinibuster]

Political sites are notoriously hard for Adsense to target...

Low inventory
That means there are few to near zero advertisers specific for your site topic.

Interest based advertising
Do you have IBA turned on? IBA may be a positive source of ad inventory and clicks for your site.

Seasonal
Do revenues rise or dip according to election cycle? Knowing cyclical patterns can help in planning revenue stream. By taking advantage of understanding cycles one can create new sites to supplement income during lulls or even target different regions.


No shoppers
Are people at your site to buy? If visitors aren't at a site with shopping somewhere on their mind then you may have an uphill battle. That said, site related t-shirts, caps, bumper stickers and stickers are one way to generate income from issue-oriented site visitors, effectively turning the issue into merchandise that can be purchased. This worked well for sites like The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Getting back to AdSense, one way to make it work is to focus on a high impression strategy. See below.

CPM revenue
CPM, where you're paid per impression, may be the best way to earn from non-buying traffic. But you have to keep the traffic flowing high. This could involve focusing on social media type referrals. Most importantly, check your control panel to be sure you have all of the Display Ads enabled. In your control panel go to Allow and Block Ads, then check the tab labeled Ad Serving. Then scroll down and enable all the different forms of display ads.

Good luck!
;)

[ShayneB]

Thanks for the responses and for welcoming me to the forum.

Hi ShayneB, welcome to the Forums. 2 Questions - is your site mobile friendly? Have you tried the new responsive "auto" size ads yet?

Thank you, not2easy. I have a really nice, responsive theme, and I do get the highest number of views and clicks on mobile, though I also get a slightly lower CTR and much, much lower CPC on mobile.

Is your traffic the same, and does it come from the same mix of sources and keywords (to the degree that you can tell)? It kind of sounds like smart pricing, and that usually happens when there's an issue with traffic quality.

Do you see pretty much the same advertisers?

Our traffic hasn't changed much in the past year, nor have our traffic sources. I can't really attest to whether or not the advertising is the same as it was months or a year ago.

Low inventory
That means there are no advertisers specific for your topic.

I highly suspect this is a large part of the problem. A year ago we were seeing a flurry of text ads and text ad clicks. Now, not so much. The proportion of interest-based vs contextual has also flipped from largely contextual to largely interest-based.

Interest based advertising
Do you have IBA turned on? IBA may be a positive source of ad inventory and clicks for your site.

Yes.

Seasonal
Do revenues rise or dip according to election cycle? Knowing cyclical patterns can help in planning revenue stream. By taking advantage of understanding cycles one can create new sites to supplement income during lulls or even target different regions.

I only have about thirteen months of Adsense to go by, so I'm honestly not sure. In that amount of time we've gone from solid, steady earnings just over a year ago to a sudden, substantial drop toward the end of last summer (bad, but not as bad as the current drop), to exceptionally high earnings which peaked in October, to a steady decline ever since.

No shoppers
Are people at your site to buy? If visitors aren't at a site with shopping somewhere on their mind then you may have an uphill battle. That said, site related t-shirts, caps, bumper stickers and stickers are one way to generate income from issue-oriented site visitors, effectively turning the issue into merchandise that can be purchased. This worked well for sites like The Flying Spaghetti Monster. Getting back to AdSense, one way to make it work is to focus on a high impression strategy. See below.

People aren't on our site to buy, simply to read articles and watch videos. I would probably be much more concerned that this is impacting CTR if not for the fact that not only have we seen significant earnings in the past, but so have pages very, very similar to ours that we work closely with. And while those page owners have told me their earnings are also down a bit from last year, they aren't remotely close to what we're experiencing.

CPM revenue
CPM, where you're paid per impression, may be the best way to earn from non-buying traffic. But you have to keep the traffic flowing high. This could involve focusing on social media type referrals. Most importantly, check your control panel to be sure you have all of the Display Ads enabled. In your control panel go to Allow and Block Ads, then check the tab labeled Ad Serving. Then scroll down and enable all the different forms of display ads.

I would estimate that at least 80% of our traffic is driven by social media postings. Our posts are shared on five separate Facebook pages that total about 350,000 followers and on Twitter and Google Plus. Our second highest referrer after Facebook is Google search.

I do have the last four display ad options blocked. I just blocked those about a week ago to put a stop to the five cents a click CPE ads that were comprising 50% of our clicks. Our numbers have risen just a hair since then.

I really appreciate all of the input, but I think I'm just going to have to resign to the fact that the matter is almost entirely out of my hands. I realize the best way to approach a problem like this is typically to focus on quality content and views, but we've always made this a central focus. My gut tells me the massive drop is the result of low inventory suitable for our site coupled with a change in advertiser targeting and spending, but I'm perplexed by the fact that other pages just like ours aren't experiencing an Adsense drop anywhere close to this.

[Lame_Wolf]

Low inventory
That means there are few to near zero advertisers specific for your site topic.

Oh, come off it. If you said that 5 years ago, I would possibly agree.

For a long time now, Google serves you any old #*$! as long as it fills the space.

[netmeg]

For a long time now, Google serves you any old #*$! as long as it fills the space.

Of course they do, but any old #*$! ads don't really pay very well.

[Lame_Wolf]

Of course they do, but any old #*$! ads don't really pay very well.

I have seen off topic adverts that pay well, and on-topic adverts that haven't... and visa-versa.

[engine]

I was asked to help a site with AdSense a short while back and it was pretty obvious what had gone wrong. Somehow, they "accidentally" or "unknowingly" had blocked Google spidering and AdSense was performing badly. A quick change to the site and it's working much better now.

Personally, I dislike IBAs because, usually, i've already acquired the item, and, if i'm not buying, to keep showing me an ad won't change my mind.

One site I worked with last year switched away from AdSense to its own sales inventory and it found the ads were more relevant and produced better results. Of course, they had to manage the ads, and the sales, but they already had a sales department selling ad space for another use, so it was cost-effective for them.

[netmeg]

You can opt out of interest based ads:

[google.com...]

I wish they'd have separate settings for remarketing vs IBA, but they don't. IBA is *not* just the remarketing, it's also targeted based on gender, age, interests and so on. Personally, I did some checking recently, and my IBA revenue has skyrocketed this year. The clicks and impressions are still below contextual, but the revenue is 58% of my total.

[martinibuster]

Good point netmeg! Particularly if traffic is social-based for non-evergreen topics, especially for topics that don't have products or search queries behind them. Thinking of celebrity/news/sporting/social etc type sites.

engine makes a fair point about technical issues possibly playing a role.

One other thing I forgot to mention was whether your site is mobile/tablet friendly.

[engine]

I like to leave IBAs and remarketing on to see how some people are using them. It doesn't mean I like them. ;)

Responsive works well, although, i've not seen revenues from mobile match desktop just yet. I guess other factors for mobile also depend upon the site and its topic, too. Some sites are just too "heavy" and in-depth to read on mobile.

[eek2121]

You might have a nice responsive theme, but you really should dig into Google Analytics. Where is the largest portion of your visitors coming from? More importantly, where were they coming from months ago when you had awesome earnings. Your earnings may have been from desktop users before, and maybe your mobile ads are getting ignored (imho simply having a responsive design isn't good enough, ad placement on mobile should be treated differently from desktop.)

I've recently experienced an interesting problem with my site. I rolled out a brand spanking new responsive design, and adsense earnings initially dropped to record lows. CTR was a laughable 0.2%. However, CPC started creeping up as I did a/b testing (CTR rose slightly as well, but is still in the toilet). After extensive testing i have come up with a solution that has really #*$!ty CTR (no idea why this is...except that people come to my site to learn) but amazing CPC ($1-$3 per click, damn near every click). As a result, my overall earnings are up, despite CPC being down. What i'm trying to get at here is you need to TEST! Find out where your traffic is coming from and work on improving that segment. Even if you are riding sky high, making tons of money, you should be working on making things even better. People change. Technology changes. Most people missed the mobile transition when it started happening and were shocked when earnings dropped like a rock.

One of my clients had traffic from google grow by more than 3X thanks to a panda update, but their conversion rate for ecommerce dropped like a rock. They couldn't figure out why and asked me to take a look. It turns out that the majority of people hitting their site were on mobile devices, and their website absolutely SUCKED on mobile.

You have to look at your traffic, and use any/all tools available to you to find out what is different. Only then can you begin to make actual fixes. The days of sitting on a stagnant website and making passive content updates while riding the wave of amazing ad revenue are long since over. To be in this business you have to learn how to adapt to rapid changes in the environment.

[martinibuster]

...find out what is different.

Good point. Similar thing happened to me when I recently rolled out a responsive design. Earnings dive at first. Tested various responsive AdSense ad units then tried a mix of responsive and not responsive and finally found a mix that worked. The most important thing is that all devices are accommodated, and other UI tweaks work together with my goals.