December 2014 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

An excellent month for some and the worst month of the year for others.

[andreiut]

i see.. thanks.

[RedBar]

Wednesday just managed to get to my average however the real culprit seems to be the UK. Yesterday PVs were at 66%, again, for the past few weeks my UK metrics have been all over the place but looking at G's UK SERPs that's hardly surprising when many of the results are clearly US biased for my widgets.

[Mentat]

Strangely, for me the thanksgiving day long holiday was very good in term of $ and traffic, but this Wednesday smells like Panda again :(

[RedBar]

Totally and utterly bizarre today, Thursday, already I'm at 150% of daily average earnings with a CTR of 50% average and PVs way, way, way down!

[explorador]

Not the best month of the year for me (on any year)
BUT... I'm having a lot of changes I didn't see in the past on my account: X earnings at 23:00 only to find 50% of it next day as the official total.

[cptops]

hi, it's true that google adsense changed the maximum graphical ads per page? i see many sites using up to 5 ad units per page. and they are not premium.
thanks.

@andreiut how do you know a site is not premium?

I don't know if my site is "premium" or not but I know I was whitelisted to show more then 3 ads per page. I'll have to check but I think I'm allowed to show 5 per page.

Google does this by site and not by account. So while I might manage multiple sites under one account. Only one of my sites in that account is whitelisted to show so many ads.

[RedBar]

Friday ended up with average earnings thanks to several good value clicks however today, Saturday, I may as well switch off everything and save the electricity, flatlining across the board, all zeroes except for the occasional PV ... great, only 4 weeks to go until things "may" get back to normal.

[RedBar]

If this board is any reflection of your real world then I have to assume everything is hunky dory for everyone, you're preparing for Xmas or something and that nothing spectacular is going wrong!

Meanwhile my Saturday was extraordinary considering how badly it started, firstly the breakdown v Nov 1st until now average:

PVs 59.7%
Clicks 86.2%
CTR 142%
CPC 124%
RPM 176.8%
Earn 105.7%

To the extraordinary and first-ever time:

Tablets 41.5%
High end mobile 38%
Desktop 20.5%

Yep, tablets and smartphones derived 79.5% of earnings with a combined CPC average of nearly 135%.

We'll see how long this lasts!

[avalon37]

CPC prices have been terrible for me the last 2 days. And not just in comparison to the start of this holiday season, I mean bad compared to an average day for me. Odd.

[Mentat]

avalon, same here...
Artificial and sudden things are happening @ google :(

[RedBar]

Utterly dire for me today however it's not going to be my worst-ever day nonetheless my CPC is looking extremely low at the moment.

[RedBar]

WTF is going on?

I've been away on business for a couple of days and no one is posting...my AdSense is utter crap...where the hell are you all?

[ember]

I'm here. There's just not a lot happening. Earnings aren't great but this is my slow period, so I am really just waiting for the holidays to be over.

[Barrelroll]

Google made three updates to Penguin last week. Looks like they're hitting us hard now.

[netmeg]

My traffic is pretty good, earnings are a little over expectations but nothing drastic. As ember says, this is my slow period. And putting on Christmas for extended family is a whole lot of work.

[breeks]

Three ads on a page, all three ads showing the same advertiser. And the ad is as about as unrelated to the page topic as you could possibly get.

Off to a good start for the day :)

[avalon37]

The amount of testing they are doing during peak Holiday is indicative that they are desperate borderline clueless. Yes, seeing a lot of double ad serving too. Also, what makes no sense is that say I have a page about brand A. Brand A is an Adwords advertiser and their ads appear on my site. But Brand A ads never appear as part of the first ads shown. If I refresh the screen then Brand A ads show up. Or if I don't refresh page and click onto a second page about Brand A then Brand A ads always automatically come up and I can refresh the screen 10x and the ads always continue to display Brand A. But almost NEVER on the first impression for a visitor. This defies logic and I am convinced it's some kind of bug and not tied to the fact the Brand A just is not bidding high enough to be shown "first". This happens all the time, costs me a ton of money - not to mention Google.

[RedBar]

Hahaha...awesome G...5 clicks at $0.12 today so far...absolutely fubard!

[netmeg]

Why do we have so much old stuff pinned to the top of this forum?

[SnowLeppard]

Why do we have so much old stuff pinned to the top of this forum?

Perhaps Webmasterworld has been hit so hard by "algorithm updates" that no new users are coming and it isn't worth anyone's while to be bothered changing it.

[MrSavage]

I have to say WOW. This is for me a record setting day based on my new standards. Not an "all time" record, but for what I'm expecting these days, this is absolutely freaking amazing.

[breeks]

Do you really think that Adsense always shows the highest paying ad first?

I am starting to think they show the highest paying advertiser (payment to AdWords) first, not the highest paying per click to publisher.

So when they say "highest paying ad first" they are correct, but they do not specify who the pay goes to.

Advertiser A has budget of 50,000 but only pays .25 per click

Advertiser B has budget of 5,000 and pays .50 per click.

Advertiser A is highest paying advertiser, just not to the publisher.

Random thought of the day :)

[ken_b]

My understanding is that they show the ad that is most likely to earn the most (for both them and the publisher).

So an ad that pays $0.10 with a projected 30% CTR will appear ahead of an ad that pays $0.25 with a projected CTR of 10%.

3 x $0.10 = $0.30
vs
1 x $0.25 = $0.25

.

[netmeg]

There's a lot more than that that goes into what a click is worth at the time it occurs.

[ken_b]

There's a lot more than that that goes into what a click is worth at the time it occurs.

On the publisher side?

On the advertisers side, sure.
.

[breeks]

"Our system will always show the highest paying ads"


The devil is in the detail :)

[ken_b]

The devil is in the detail :)

Define: devil :)
.

[avalon37]

My understanding is that they show the ad that is most likely to earn the most (for both them and the publisher).

So an ad that pays $0.10 with a projected 30% CTR will appear ahead of an ad that pays $0.25 with a projected CTR of 10%.

3 x $0.10 = $0.30
vs
1 x $0.25 = $0.25


I believe this COULD be the intended algorithm, and more often than not does work this way....but for a while now, I have seem evidence that it doesn't ALWAYS work this way or their algorithm has bugs which makes their ad serving not 100% as described above.

I say this is not always the case because I see this scenario (described below) on one of my sites consistently.

Also, what makes no sense is that say I have a page about brand A. Brand A is an Adwords advertiser and their ads appear on my site. But Brand A ads never appear as part of the first ads shown. If I refresh the screen then Brand A ads show up. Or if I don't refresh page and click onto a second page about Brand A then Brand A ads always automatically come up and I can refresh the screen 10x and the ads always continue to display Brand A. But almost NEVER on the first impression for a visitor. This defies logic and I am convinced it's some kind of bug and not tied to the fact the Brand A just is not bidding high enough to be shown "first". This happens all the time, costs me a ton of money - not to mention Google.

[SnowLeppard]

Define: devil :)

Google

[RedBar]

Dead on its back for me, Friday's PVs 66% of average, in fact probably my lowest Friday ever. Today, Saturday, so far only 10% of usual traffic, my sites may as well not be there.