March 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

February had only 28 days, but for me was pretty good in the end, but I do not think it will last, because I see less traffic and clicks each day.

We had President Day, Valentines Day and Freezing temperatures in US.

Let's hope that March 2015 will be better; there are no major holidays.

[breeks]

Today is best day of the month so far :)

[RedBar]

Definitely the worst day of the month so far :-(

[eeek]

The glass is definitely twice as big as it needs to be.

[netmeg]

Well I closed out February at 103% of last February, so all things considered, it could have been worse. I hate February though. Onward and upward to March.

[Mike343]

anyone else seeing a lot of unmatched requests? and even more when using dfp?

[eeek]

anyone else seeing a lot of unmatched requests? and even more when using dfp?

Yes! It started a month ago (longer than that for DFP). Something is broken and it isn't on my end.

[ember]

I visited a website once about a month ago and have seen its ad on every single website I have visited since. I am sick of the ad and am developing negative feelings toward the company. I wouldn't click on that ad if you paid me. If I am feeling this way, I imagine more and more users are, too. Hence, less clicking happening.

[Mike343]

Yep, noticed the same thing as well. About the unmatched requests not sure what is up with DFP.

[Mentat]

Dammit, those nasty Download Buttons again.

[i.imgur.com...]

Google improved Adwords algo to detect them about one month ago.
No more multiple accounts from adware (toolbar) companies; it was great...

Now I count more than 100 "similar ads" from Bimo Media LTD for 2 domains.

The problem is that I do not see those ads on my Ad Preview area!
They go live without my pre-approval!

Frustrating... I've contacted my Adsense rep.

# of clicks are going down sure and steady, but for the moment the mirage is maintained by hich CPC

[RedBar]

Sunday was slightly above average for clicks and CTR however the unmatched ads were horrendous resulting in earnings being down again with the USA EPC being 65.5% of average.

My sites are mostly about specialised construction products, they are not about:

Flat Belly
Cleaning products
Annuity calculator
Commercial refrigeration
Advertsing online
Mobile phones

Nowhere on my pages are these products even referred to yet several pages later I am seeing full-sized ads for Commercial Refrigeration.

They're not IBAs since my browsers' caches are always cleared on closure, it's a totally screwed-up system, again!

And it's SO good today that so far I've earned 0.03 cents, yep, three cents.

[RedBar]

No wonder I've only earned 3 cents today, I have also only had 122 PVs, 0 Clicks, 0 CTR and 0.18 RPM ...yeah, right, so the red bar isn't required?

If they didn't waste their resources on reducing my finalised earnings, as usual, this programme may work for more than 5 minutes.

[devGirl]

Our Feb was down 25% from January, which was down 33% from December. Yes, January is usually low but not that low. Last year our CTR hovered at about .30% now it's half that, which tells me the ads are not relevant to our site/users. One thing is that I'm noticing a lot of text ads now, when I have never seen them before.

I do believe there was a glitch in the matching algorithm and it changed in January. But it seems to be on the upswing the last couple of days. Keeping a close watch.

[Mike343]

Running a split test with all placements using either text or text/display. Seeing a lot lower cpcs with this but a better ctr. Not what I had before though.

[ember]

January and February were down but things really picked up on Saturday, the 28th. Maybe things are back on track.

[RedBar]

Well, I've had half a Google day and I am seeing the worst metrics EVER, this thing is completely fubard beyond recognition for me.

I have the UAE leading the way with earnings and the USA and UK both on zero clicks, this is a freakin' joke!

[HowYesNo]

since last week both ctr and cpc are 30% down, don't know why, it just happened one day and never recovered, also their metrics are really freakin' joke

[SnowLeppard]

Seeing lots of takebacks. After each one the earning don't budge for a while.

Same ads every time. Only time I see any ads that I might be tempted to click on is when I visit ebay.

Adsense logo should be flipped horizontally to make it more representative.

[kireb]

February was a great month and March is rocking so far. Good begun is half done!

[kireb]

February was a great month and March is rocking so far. Good begun is half done!

[RedBar]

A couple of more days like Monday and AdSense will be gone, average EPC at 66.66% of February, click volume down, CTR down, but that's hardly surprising since I have NOTHING to do with commercial refrigeration and it is plastered all over my sites!

[breeks]

So far today CTR is exactly half of Monday CTR. Still early in the day but ....

[avalon37]

Interest based clicks are what are keeping AdSense viable for me. They pay SO much more than contextual clicks. The good news (for me) is that IBA are the future.

[RedBar]

IBAs I don't have a problem with, totally non-related ads on clean cache browsers pi$$ me off.

[Mike343]

Never had issues with IBAs as well but seeing a contextual ad for Prostate Cancer on an automotive related site is stupid.

[avalon37]

CPC prices on fire today! Just had one click worth roughly the price of lunch.

[SnowLeppard]

CPC prices on fire today! Just had one click worth roughly the price of lunch.

So did I earlier. Gone now though.

[breeks]

Usually I only check stats morning and evening. Today checked more frequently. All day long they are nibbling away at earnings. Two steps forward one step back.

Are advertisers getting money back?

Maybe they need money for the G car before Apple makes the I car.

[eek2121]

OP: I'm sorry, but you can't blame Google for lost traffic. Lost traffic (outside of Google penalties, all of which are issued for good reasons, typically optimizing for SEO even though Google told you not to) typically is due to 1) lost user interest. 2) Change of audience (behavior, technology, or demographics) and failure to adapt 3) Some other random thing you as a publisher did or did not do. Not trying to be a jerk here, but I would be willing to bed OP falls in one of those 3 categories. If you want to be a publisher (aka, salesman) you need to learn to pay close attention to your niche and adapt as quickly as possible to your users' needs.

Example: today many users read content from smartphones. 10 years ago? Smartphones outside of lame phones like blackberry and windows phones didn't exist. Mobile versions of sites didn't exist. Today mobile is king, and a mobile site will always outrank a non-mobile site on Google. What have you done to make your site be awesome on mobile? Awesome doesn't just mean a mobile presence either. Mobile devices are much slower. If your site takes more than a couple seconds to load on my aging Galaxy S III, freezes when I try to scroll, or has annoying email/advertisement popups, hey guess what, I'm going to exit before the ads even load.

That's just an example though. Google HAS had a decline in ad value, but from what I've found, it's due to an INCREASE in lower value traffic (3rd world countries getting online), not due to a decrease in ad revenue from countries like the US (unless you are talking about mobile vs desktop, mobile ads pay less than desktop ads, but this isn't Google's fault). Note that you can still have a decrease from the US if your TRAFFIC from the US decreases, your traffic switches to mobile, or if you are smart priced due to poor traffic quality.

By the way I don't mean to sound like i'm flaming or anything. I just wish those that are having the problems were more forthcoming with information so that maybe we can all work together to fix it. I also don't claim to be a pro at AdSense, but I know problems when i see them and can generally try to help unless people aren't being truthful. I kind of feel like (and I have been guilty of this in the past) this forum has become nothing more then a place to complain instead of help each other.

[Mentat]

As a site note, my adsense rep told me yesterday that the amount of "fake clicks" on my account was 15% last year and this year is 38% !

The main question remains how do you detect "fake clicks" ?

Changes in the detection mechanism are transparent when after a long period of steady # of clicks, you see a big drop.