November 2014 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

The month that starts my traditional slide towards Xmas and New Year.

[breeks]

November usually starts out slow and end up good. But with all the Penguins Pandas and flavor of the day ad styles who knows.

Today on desktop I see the usual giant arrows.

Tablet no arrows and all ad units have a border. (my setting is border and background same color)

On Mobile there are arrows

Tablet ads with borders if there is more than one ad in unit the top ad has a border and the rest of the ads in same unit do not.

[netmeg]

November usually sucks for me, but hey - half way to next year's peak season!

(Actually this is the time when I start mapping out any changes or improvements we wanna implement for next year. I'm just as happy it's slow)

[ember]

I expected this month to be slow, but today looks amazing. Don't know why exactly, but I'll take it.

[Mentat]

Saturday was good, but Sunday I see a new minimum!

[avalon37]

Incredible start to November. CTR and CPC WAY up for me. What's surprising is that the increased CPC is mostly coming from clicks outside of the US which is rare for me so unlikely the clicks will "stay". Also, it's surprising the clicks outside the US are 3-4X the CPC of the US clicks today. I don't normally see that - same ad format. Weird.

[RedBar]

Is the US hungover from Friday?

I've never seen this before, the UK generated 64.4% of my earnings yesterday, the US only 16.4%!

FWIW I was talking with the manager of a pub I frequent last night, this pub so happens to be part of the UK's largest pub chain, and he also commented that it was the worst Sunday he could recall in years and that it had been "dead" all day. Obviously dead is a relative term to their normal takings however something weird did happen.

[avalon37]

I am 99% certain now that there are daily earning "caps" in place. What I mean is that if typically average X dollars a day, Adsense has a system in place that limits how far over that average you can earn. For example, yesterday was my best day in 6 months. But the earnings stopped with 4 hours left in the day. Which given my kind of consumer site is B.S. that there wasn't any clicks during my best time of the day for clicks. Anyway, I always suspected they probably have "caps" on earnings, but now I am convinced. Of course the "caps" move up during says peak times for your website, but even during strong times of the year - AdSense has measures in place.

[FourDegreez]

Trend I've noticed since October has been falling RPM throughout the day. It's frustrating. CTR and CPC are both down from this time last year.

[jbayabas]

I'm telling you Google is stealing from us. That's why their market share continues to remain high and steady.

[netmeg]

Why would you continue to do business with someone you think is stealing from you?

[ember]

I'm telling you Google is stealing from us.

I'm having an outstanding month so far. Are they stealing from you but not from me? How does that work?

I still think a lot of it (people seeing earnings less than several months ago) is Google's having gotten better at click fraud detection.

[RedBar]

As much as I would like a conspiracy theory and an earnings cap I find it very implausible when I check their metrics against my own logs.

Sure, I nearly always seem to be down when we have a red bar situation, however in general, my stats usually match-up reasonably well and I really would like to be back in the UPS club but that ain't going to happen after their take-over of the image serps.

[breeks]

I'm telling you Google is stealing from us

They have no reason to steal from publishers.

On the other hand they are doing their best to direct web traffic to Google properties and search ads instead of publisher sites.

So kinda indirect stealing :)

[Chronos Slayer]

November and December is always good for me :) the cpc and rpm seems higher than last month. So hopefully it will be an awesome month. finger cross :)

[avalon37]

"They have no reason to steal from publishers."

That's kind of a ridiculous statement. "Keeping" clicks - not reporting/crediting ALL valid clicks to publishers results in higher profits for Google. Google's business is very interesting since they don't really sell a product or a service. It's a service - based on an auction format. But all comparable types of companies like for example are always looking for ways to increase profits. When CPC prices are trending down due to the shift to smartphones, you can be sure Google is doing everything possible to continue to grow profits and beat wall street expectations. I'm not saying they are stealing clicks - but I think they absolutely have publishers caps/controls in place. But statements like "no reason" is a bit naive.

[jmorgan]

Diwali, Autumn Break, Halloween, Melbourne Cup. The world is just having too much fun. Back to work/school all of you!

[netmeg]

Bonfire night! Lots of fireworks.

[dethfire]

My CPC has been dropping

[Mentat]

Like a rock...

[RedBar]

Fingers crossed however I've had a better start to November than October and my CPC seems to be holding with CTR consistent.

One thing I have noticed is that on my responsive html5 sites that my 300 x 250 unit at the bottom of every page is performing well.

[Saffron]

Mine is okay, has been steadily increasing since my site was hit in May. Each month slowly climbs (and fingers crossed will continue to do so).

Interestingly, I just compared my stats from October 2014 to October 2012 (my best year ever), and I had 50,000 more visitors in October '14, but my Adsense is down by low $x,000. CPC is higher, but CTR has more than halved.

[RedBar]

Interestingly, I just compared my stats from October 2014 to October 2012

Bizarre, I was doing that this afternoon and went back to 2009 and it hurt so much looking at what I used to do before Google's image grab that I had to close it rapidly.

[Saffron]

What do you think has caused it?

For me, I think a part of it is an increase in the use of mobiles and ipads. But a drop of 50% CTR is really very depressing.

In December 2012, I had less visitors than October 2014 but earned mid $x,000 (not sure if I'm allowed to mention $$$ value) more.

[kaz]

Same seasonal slide here. Looking forward to Jan 5th

Happy holidays.

[Mentat]

I'm full of "Smokey Bear - Only You Can Prevent Wildfires" ads!

[MrSavage]

Drop dead gorgeous earnings today! Outta this world!

[RedBar]

What do you think has caused it?

My earnings' reduction was simply the image grab Google made in January 2013, once it settled it was -80% which is about the average I've read from other image gallery sites.

Yesterday was above average for CTR and CPC from the US but utterly appalling from the UK with one of its worst-ever days.

[dethfire]

CPC is lowest in months for me.

[Chronos Slayer]

The cpc is bouncing a lot for me since beginning of this month, might be steady after 15 or so. will see finger crossed :D