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]

Red Bar in the morning day 2

[netmeg]

Red bar all morning and very few clicks. Hope they gonna catch up soon. Yesterday was great.

[RedBar]

Yep, CTR well down but at least a click, yes one, from the UK...it all seems to have gone pear-shaped again.

[trebuchet]

Had the red bar fairly constantly over the last couple of days. Seems to come and go every time I update. Starting to get a bit annoying.

RPM down since Friday, largely due to horrendous CTR, but getting back to normal today.

[anefarious1]

My CTR has taken a serious dive over the last few days. Checked here and I see others are experiencing the same.

[RedBar]

CTR and click volume the same as Monday's and below average, at least I had some UK clicks!

[trebuchet]

Yep, CTR back in the toilet again for me today. It's about 25% below average for the past five days. Probably not surprising when I look at my sites from different locations, as the quality of the ad inventory is poor. CTR down only slightly during this period but I've noticed a significant drop in the number of high value clicks ($1 and above).

[MrSavage]

Whelp, Adsense is really paving the way for my decisions at this point. Things are not optimistic from my perspective. I guess the web will get a bit lighter as I shut the door on a fair amount of ideas and some websites that I know people did enjoy. I guess way back machine will keep those resources alive, or the scrapers will take full ownership. Not great these days regarding earnings and this isn't worthwhile for me in a lot of instances.

[MrSavage]

I'm more convinced that it's the upper echelon of sites that's going to move forward with Adsense. For the rest of us, I'm not convinced there is anything better coming. Another horrific day today (18th). Somebody mentioned the ad inventory being poor. Only explanation for my results is the quality of ads and the lack of relevant ads, which goes to my point about that top 30% moving along just fine. Based on what I read from a recent poll, about 70% of people are showing declines, with I think about 20% or thereabouts are better or remaining about the same. Ad inventory, that just may be the story. This is going to be an interesting few months for me moving forward.

[Mentat]

Even for "the upper echelon of sites" is impossible to monetise the visits from NON-US countries.

The thing is that very few advertisers are using Display ads, the vast majority are using Search only.

Also, US is much stronger now compared with EUR/GBP.

[glitterball]

Looking very bad here again today. Seeing over 50% CTR decline today.

[nubchai]

I'm down again too. Not as bad as February. Whatever is happening is very erratic.

[RedBar]

Something's happening with search by the looks of it, my traffic is way down so far today resulting in only a very few clicks. If this sticks then that will probably be me finished with AdSense altogether.

[RedBar]

Total collapse for me today with second-lowest CTR and absolute-lowest RPM of 2015.

I'm getting fed-up of this malarky.

[Mentat]

Adx problems.
2 mails today with this message:

Dear Customer,

We continue experiencing performance issues with the DoubleClick for Publishers application.

At this time we do not have an estimate for when this issue will be resolved. We will send an update by 1.30/3:00 PM ET.

Please note that ad serving is not affected.

We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

[edited by: Mentat at 6:05 pm (utc) on Mar 19, 2015]

[super70s]

I guess the web will get a bit lighter as I shut the door on a fair amount of ideas and some websites that I know people did enjoy.

The Flippa nuclear option is looking more appealing every day, heh. Maybe some of those people would know how to monetize my 20-year-old site better than I do.

[RedBar]

Just this past few minutes I have surpassed New Year's Day for PVs however Clicks are half, CTR is half, CPC is half therefore RPM is under a quarter ... AdSense is committing hari kari before my very eyes!

[AlexB77]

After a great start of March, my CPC and RPM went down for almost 2 weeks while others were reporting slight rise. Last 2 days everything has improved and as others were saying I can afford good dinner for 4 in a posh London restaurant.

I also want to say that I am not in the "upper echelon of sites" yet, but things are looking really promising since beginning of this year.

I also see some improvements in my ad review centre, my inventory has grown from 17000 to 45000, so I guess things are starting to improve and I see less and less irrelevant adds across my sites.

[MrSavage]

If you are experiencing increases or staying on par, then yeah, upper echelon. When you're in a minority of 10-20%, what else do you call it?

[dvduval]

Adsense has become "bottom fill" for me. I have several alternatives that are more profitable, but in a few cases I use Adsense for a few extra pennies. Especially direct ad sales are way more profitable for me. Adsense was great back in the day and I am grateful, but when revenue is about 15% of peak (around 2004), and there are more profitable alternatives, I have to go with the ones that pay. It's just business.

[RedBar]

As expected my numbers stayed in the gutter all day resulting in my worst day of the month with 44.3% of average and 66.6% of my previous low, my EPC fell through the floor, again, and today so far is looking even worse.

Whatever update is going on obviously does not like unique content on my responsive html5 sites!

[breeks]

Doing really well today so that means tomorrow will be in the dumps:)

[avalon37]

Having a very strong month, but not without the typical Google rollercoaster. Week 1 of March cpc was up 70% compared to entire month of Feb. Then week 2 of March cpc drops 54% compared to week 1, now week 3 is back on fire....cpc up 84% compared to last week. Typical Google tinkering - in a good way for me luckily.

[chalkywhite]

Whats going on this last week? Traffic has not dropped in any way however my hobby site has gone from around £45 per day to an average of £7 per day, same amount of clicks etc.

[MrSavage]

What a dump! (not that kind of dump, but the kind of dump of cash that fills the pockets and spills out onto the floor)

[marsradio]

Was doing awesome today until about 1800 hrs UTC. Then a grinding halt. Ads are loading super slow. To quote a drunken John Wayne, "It's getting to be ri-G*dDa*n-diculous!"

[RedBar]

What a dump!

Was Friday Google catch-up day? Easily my best day of the week even though PVs, for the second day running, were at 82%

[anefarious1]

"Was Friday Google catch-up day? Easily my best day of the week even though PVs, for the second day running, were at 82%"

I tend to agree. Something really bad happened several days ago but things are gradually getting back to normal (I hope). I wish Google would communicate more. I emailed them a few days ago but still haven't heard back. I was freaking out. Still kinda rattled.

[RyuUK]

This past week has been terrible and today is a right shocker. Whenever a bad pattern like this goes on, I always pop straight on here for updates and it was no surprise to see so many others in a similar boat.

[kireb]

I have the same feeling about Fridays. They seem to be catch up days. RPM and click through the roof, completely breaking existing trends. Not that I complain. March 2015 will be my best month ever. What I worry about a bit though is that my site is not suited for mobile appliances. Its a library of pdf documents best used on desktop computers. I get about 93% of my queries through desktop search. Will Google punish me in April with the mobile algorithm change? My site is just not fit for mobile use, however I'll change it.