May 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[incrediBILL]

Continuation thread from April:
[webmasterworld.com...]

This thread is for discussing AdSense fluctuations only.

This thread is not for discussions of bot blocking, ad placement, reporting to google, or anything other than it's express intended purpose, the fluctuations of adsense.

All other other topics need to be taken to a new thread
Off topic posts may be deleted without notice.

[netmeg]

Holidays are good for me; way up over last year.

[breeks]

I recently blocked Google certified ad networks but if you read the fine print it looks like this may not be entirely be possible.

Google certified ad networks may be notified of your allow & block settings (including advertiser URLs and categories), so that they may comply and show appropriate ads

"may be notified" "may comply"

Looks like some wiggly room for Google certified ad networks to show even if you have them blocked

[Mentat]

Since Thursday, I have another problem...
My kind of stable CTR ~ 2% is now 6%.
The # of clicks are pretty stable, but my PV are 1/3 of normal => 3x the usual CTR!

[RedBar]

Checking my sites I am seeing loads and loads of Google's own ads, that's never good for earnings.

[Maleda]

@RedBar seeing the exact same here - depressing isn't it!

[Sillysoft]

Miserable day for me, but its expected for me at least. I dunno why, but people just dont like my sites over holiday weekends.

[breeks]

Good day here just about 50/50 mobile/desktop revenue from Adsense.

Whatever update they did last week helped. (this time)

[RedBar]

Wow, is this going to be a first for me this month?

I have only just noticed that my UK earnings' total is only $4 behind the US, it's never been this close, my UK CTR is 226% higher than the US and my EPC 113.6% higher. Obviously my UK PVs are much lower otherwise earnings would be way higher.

My US CTR has been much lower this month compared to its consistent 2015 average at 80.5% whereas the UK is much higher at 143.4%.

[Mentat]

WOW, Sunday seems to be new record crap day on all counts.

[EditorialGuy]

We've been doing pretty well this month, and for whatever reason, our average page RPM for tablets is noticeably higher than for desktop.

[netmeg]

Interestingly, while I'm way up overall, my tablet earnings have pretty much disappeared. Can't get arrested on tablets.

[jbayabas]

8 years ago, I quit my 75k a year day job when Adsense surpassed it. I thought focusing on Adsense would make me even more money. It did for 6 years. Then a year ago, everything collapsed. I'm now looking for a new job. A new beginning; starting from scratch again. It's a mistake I've learned and not one I will repeat.

Adsense is now a hobby like it should be when I first started. This time I will never quit my day job even if my Adsense goes back to normal again.

[Ebuzz]

@ jbayabas

I assume you are still of "employable" age? You are doing the right thing.

I was like you; quit my job to focus on Adsense and my IM "biz". My job was in a huge multinational corporation. I was also earning thousands in affiliate income back then, and everything was looking promising. Then, 2012 came with Penguin/Panda and the rest is history.

Now, being out of the loop for so long, it is very HARD to go back to the working world. Not at this age. Companies just don't want people in their 40s.

But that's another issue....

(And if the SHTF, I don't have any ideas what I am going to do).

[EditorialGuy]

I thought focusing on Adsense would make me even more money. It did for 6 years. Then a year ago, everything collapsed.

The whole ad market has changed drastically over the past few years, thanks in part to "programmatic" (automated) ad buying. We used to have an ad-rep firm that would say, "We can sell whatever inventory you've got on [topic] for a $20 CPM." Advertisers would sometimes make deals by the year. Now the ad reps are probably selling BMWs to hedge-fund managers and paying for their own three-Martini lunches.

[HymnSite]

Sunday marked the first time in many years that Google crushed my RPMs to less than $1.00 every single day for an entire week (range from 0.42 to 0.85), compared with historical RPMs of ~$1.80, and reduced RPMs of ~$1.40 earlier this year. My revenue for the same day week on week was down by more than 41%; 7-day revenue down more than 45% compared to the prior period; 28-day revenue down nearly 30% compared to the prior period. The changes are on Google's side, and they are remarkable (I don't like making those kinds of remarks).

[breeks]

More mobile traffic = lower RPM.

AdWords ads on mobile look nothing like Adsense ads on mobile for good reason

Same deal with desktop ads.

Adsense needs to come up with some better converting ads for both mobile & desktop.(not going to hold my breath)

The best converting ad design can be seen on Google search results mobile & desktop.

[RedBar]

More mobile traffic = lower RPM.

So far this month for me v desktop rpm:

Tablets: 193.5%
Mobile: 149.3%

Mileage obviously does vary!

[MrSavage]

My one pony is at it again. It appears to be a whopper of a day. I always need to preface this information with the fact that one property is basically outperforming a collection of many properties. This performance isn't like at day job levels, so keep that in mind. However, given that the quality of content (if I do say so myself) is getting better ads, I'm somewhat more encouraged. I've reached my first step goal with that site and now it's sort of giving me a better sense of direction. At the very least I know it can stand on its own without a search engine and whatever I'm adding in terms of content, I realize it's not a complete waste of my time. At least for now it's not a waste of time.

[Ironside]

At this rate I won't earn enough in one day to buy a tin of baked beans, and that is not an exaggeration. I just don't understand how my earnings can drop so low from where they were six months ago. Somebody mentioned something that was quite interesting today, could be a possibility that people are using applications on their mobile phones that block advertising? If that's the case, then we could be losing a shed load of money. I basically run out of ideas with AdSense now, I've tried different positions, different colours, nothing seems to work. I think I'm going to concentrate on eBay from now on. I been doing it for about four months now. The very first month that I started incorporating eBay affiliate links into my websites and me £50 for the month, this month was only £27, but that's only because I removed some links in favour of Amazon which I think I'm going to bin. If you haven't tried eBay then give it a go, I've not been doing too badly for the last four months, considering I've only got links on a few pages, I haven't even started doing it properly yet. It seems that eBay do pay quite a good commission.

[RedBar]

Now that was an interesing holiday Monday.

I almost earned as much yesterday as Friday, Saturday and Sunday combined with slightly above average clicks and CTR however way above average EPC for all countries.

[Ebuzz]

I would agree that clicks from mobile traffic = lower CPC. Logically speaking, would people make big/costly purchases over mobile? Less likely. More likely, they will just go over to check out the advertiser or landing page.

The infrastructure on mobile is not yet optimized for full scale ecommerce. Desktop is a different story.

A savvy advertiser would not risk too much ad spend on mobile traffic. Even the latest data supports this, that advertiser spending on mobile is still far behind desktop. [searchengineland.com...]

So, if your earnings turned to crap after converting to responsive-all, this is likely one of the major reasons. Makes sense to me, but it still sucks....

[ken_b]

opps

.

[RedBar]

Logically speaking, would people make big/costly purchases over mobile? Less likely. More likely, they will just go over to check out the advertiser or landing page.

Honestly, only this last week I have seen a 31 year old woman spend well in excess of USD 3,000 on various household things all done on her HTC M8 even though she has a pc, laptop and tablet. I'm not saying it's common however people are obviously doing it.

[RedBar]

Stuck? Red bar time? Numbers are crazily low!

[netmeg]

Had a great weekend, but then CTR halved yesterday and today. If I hadn't already surpassed last May's number, I'd be mega-pissed instead of just pissed.

[MrSavage]

No way I can mince words on this. Yesterday was the best overall earnings day I've had in a year+. Instead of seeing a downward spiral, I'm now seeing a more upward trend. There is no particular explanation such as increased traffic. That's not the case for the most part.

[nubchai]

I saw a downturn over the holiday. Yesterday I also saw a nice upturn. No idea why as I was away for a bit and changed nothing.

[AlexB77]

I am already 3+ times over last May. Yes, holidays were little bit less than expected, but things are back to a full speed again.

[breeks]

Installed AD Block and it works great :)

Most sites load blazing fast, no annoying ads. Its surprising more people are not using it.

Sucks for publishers though.

[jbayabas]

Yeah, last two days were great here as well. Not as good as last year, but better than the last few weeks. I'll take it.

Damn, I love my job so much. But damn, I don't make that much money anymore. Oh well, guess you can't have it all in life.