January 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

I have something I want to post!

[Mentat]

I give up, I'm attacked by malware serving ads (Green download button ads)!
They are very, very busy, relentless !
I have 1500 blocked domains like this in the last 6 months!

~ 10 new domains/day,
- hundreds of ads
- hundreds of Adwords account, I block the account, but no succes.
I must block the domain AND advertiser!

Only in the last 10 hours, I've identified some new domains:

macrar.org
macrar.com
macrar.net
pdfformac.com
rarformac.org
rarformac.net
macfontspack.net
macfontspack.org
macfontspack.com
mac-pdf.org
mac-pdf.com
mac-pdf.net
freedownloadfinder.com

I've activated the option:

Hold placement targeted ads for 24 hours so they can be reviewed.

The fight goes on, but Google does not care.
They do not want to see this mafia!

Companies like Somoto, Genio, Mindspark (Ask.com), We Download (soft32.com), Adknowledge etc are destroying the internet!


* usually, it take about 24 hours to block an ad.
They go online, It takes some time for me (and others) to check for them and another few hours for the system to block them.
This is why they throw so many domains/ads each day!

[RedBar]

@ Mentat - Do I assume you have something to do with Apple Macs etc? Fortunately I've never seen those.

However what I am experiencing seems to be a melt-down in the UK. December's UK results were very poor in comparison to previous years and the first week of January 2015 v 2014 is continuing as follows:

PVs 111.8%
Clicks 48.2%
CTR 36.1%
CPC 84.6%
RPM 30.6%
Earn 40.9%

That's horrific and especially so when PVs are up and with no spikes.

[whyohwhy]

@RedBar ever since the cookie law came in a few years back I have watched my earnings via the UK drop despite month on month increase in traffic from the UK. But what I am seeing this month seems like something more and I am wondering whether there is some sort of fall out from the Black Friday sales having a knock on effect to the advertising budgets for this quarter.

[Mentat]

Europe/Asia spending in the last 3 days is grim!

When the daylight is in Europe/Asia, my eCPM is falling like a rock now!

I did not see such bad ads in a long time :(

[RedBar]

some sort of fall out from the Black Friday sales

I doubt it for my widgets, we're not involved in that sort of thing whatsoever but I have noticed a preponderance of non-relevant ads, good ads I might say, however nothing to do with my widgets.

[netmeg]

Have you tried blocking 3rd party ad networks and only serving from AdWords?

[avalon37]

Absolutely terrible CTR today. So I check ads and see a new text ad format. They'll never get it right when it comes to testing.

[AlexB77]

since January began, my adsense earnings went down the drain.

50-60% more clicks and about 70-80% less CPM/CPC

With that said, traffic is up by 40%

[ember]

Thank you, mentat, for that list. I've been seeing those ads all over my site, too, but hadn't had time to find out who the advertiser was.

[breeks]

In the same boat since Jan 1, 2015. CPC down about 25%.

Traffic up slightly, CTR steady and mix of mobile/desktop visitors unchanged.

Perhaps G decided to take a bigger cut from clicks?

[acs4pcs]

for me cpc and rpm is so bad

[RedBar]

Friday's CPC came back to average however CTR dropped by 33%, January is not good so far.

[Mentat]

Saturday = a new low, in the last 5 years.
The payment is rubbish...

[netmeg]

Yea I haven't had a day this low in a couple years. Hope it's just delayed clicks or something.

[ember]

I have three sites with similar themes but different content. The epc on two is what it usually is but on the third one has dropped by about 25%. Really odd.

[RedBar]

Strange, a Saturday and all my metrics went back to pre mid-December average metrics.

[netmeg]

And by 7AM Sunday I am already double what I did all of Saturday.

Go home, AdSense; you're drunk.

[AlexB77]

I agree @netmeg, looks like AdSense does not make any actual sense. I have the same as you, no idea about what has changed, but hoping that whatever has changed will stay

[AlexB77]

I have to say it that large chunks of clicks are taken away yesterday and today

[Mentat]

Adsense = NO sense in the last days...

It's like a decapitated chicken...

[ember]

Red bar.

[tidewatcher]

Red bar here, too.

[Mentat]

Yes, redbar for the first time in 2015 (for me).

[venti]

Same, terrible, results as everyone else here.

[Sally Stitts]

Yes, me too. Wiped out. This is so alarming, it sets the mind to racing.

Is this intended by Google? If so, WHY?
or
Have they lost the mission entirely, with too many cooks spoiling the broth.
It is hard to believe that such a loss of focus could occur.
Which suggests to me that it is intentional. But the reason escapes me.
.

[dethfire]

Still very down on CPC and RPM

[MichaelP]

The moment CPC goes up the number of clicks go down and the opposite. It's like Google simply won't allow earnings to go little higher. Saturday and Sunday experience as everyone else.

I like how Google tells me how my earnings were much lower than they estimated and that I should investigate why. Well, I haven't changed a thing Google so it must be you!

Strangely, Google adwords is still using less than 30% of my daily adwords budget. What is your problem, Google? On top of that they are recommending me to raise the daily budget because "You are loosing clicks!". Why should I raise the daily budget when you are not even using 30% of my current budget,Google?

Yeah, Google makes NoSense these days, I agree.

[kireb]

My earnings are alright so far this month, no record breaking numbers but no surprises neither. What bothers me is that the stats are bouncing up and down as a skippy ball again. Very serious click shaving going on. Stats seem to be inaccurate at this point in time.

[FourDegreez]

It's somewhat comforting to see that the low CPC issue is being seen by many people. It may be something that Google sorts out, hopefully sooner rather than later. Then again, maybe they've expanded the smart pricing concept to discount more clicks across publishers.

For me, traffic is up, CTR is consistent, it's just CPC that's down quite a bit.

[LuckyLiz]

Umm.. I'm looking for some wood to knock on, but I have not seen the pattern most of you are reporting for this month. In fact, we had one of our highest days in maybe 4 or 5 years last week.

About the relationship between CTR and CPC? I'm not seeing any predictable pattern. Some days we have higher CTR and a little lower CPC, and other days when CTR is up, so is the CPC. The amount of traffic we get to the site as a whole sometimes correlates to higher earnings, and sometimes it doesn't.

What determines how much you make on any given day or month, I suspect, are factors like which advertisers are running ads that are closely related to your content and your audience's interests; how many of them there are; which advertisers may have an influx of cash to advertise; and which might think this week -or this time of the year- is the best to reach your audience.

At the end of the day, we're all publishers, and what makes money is providing the kind of content that both the audience and the advertisers who want to reach that audience find valuable.