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.

[trebuchet]

Sucks for publishers though.

What's your reason for posting that here, breeks? I assume it's not to win friends.

[AlexB77]

People like free staff, but do not like to see adds, sites that give staff for free and rely on add revenue to survive, because of the adblock and similar software will sooner or later make their free "staff" not so free after all and when this time comes then we shall see what is better to see adds or not to see them at all.

[RedBar]

A strange Wednesday...I went to bed thinking it was going to be a very low day however I got up to the most average of average days, literally only +/-1~2% either way of every metric with two of them bang on 100% average.

[Ebuzz]

CTR continues to be very depressed and now we are at the end of May. What a terrible month, and looks like this will be the new normal (at least for those who don't command 500,000 UVs/mth or more).

[MrSavage]

I can only say that I'm being blessed with decent ads these days. Perhaps it's the free $100 Adwords promotions that went out recently. As a result I'm not confident in sustainability. I can say however that I'm quite thrilled, overall the the prospect of improvements. I've had some encouraging results via affiliate programs which has given me added faith in regaining some income. No question that if things continue well, I'm going to be planning my exit strategy from this game/business model.

[EditorialGuy]

Rubbish, even with good rankings AdSense can be next to useless these days.

Or not. On our editorial content site, we earn a lot more from affiliate links, but AdSense (even with just one unit per page) is a nice second source of revenue.

[HymnSite]

Downward crush on revenue continues. Yesterday was down over 20% against the same day last week; revenue for the week was down 23% compared to the prior week; 28-day revenue was down nearly 34% compared to the prior 28 days. All of this driven in large part by drop in RPM of 22% week on week. My traffic has remained steady at over 250,000 impressions for the month and counting (slightly down, but I have never fully recovered from the unexplained and unjustifiable Google search six-month double-secret probation spam penalty last year. No notice, so no ability to appeal. Google hasn't been my friend for the past couple years...).

May has been a very, very bad month for me.

[SEOPTI]

Seeing exactly the same with my clients. CTR is fine (desktop CTR is the lowest), EPC is the huge problem.

[jbayabas]

It's been good for the last 4 days now. Surprisingly. I hope this continues.

[RedBar]

There were four Saturdays in April and five in May and all of them have generated within one click of each other with, obviously, different CTRs and PVs. That's nine consecutive Saturdays.

To put it another way, since 4th April my Saturdays have all averaged 30% less than up to Saturday 28th March meanwhile all other days, on average, have been around the same.

That's almost unbelievable!

[glitterball]

The end of the month has got better for me.
During the month, I replaced one of the three adsense units with a Media.net unit and I blocked all ads for Google products; Adwords, Gmail etc.
CTR has improved dramatically, although CPC has remained constant.

Obviously, we never really know if the changes we have made caused these changes or if they would have happened anyway.

[Ironside]

@Glitterball how do you find media.net? I've just signed up for it, however I will probably have to wait a couple of weeks to hear whether I've been successful or not. AdSense is dying for me now, hence me concentrating on other forms of trying to earn money. EBay looks quite exciting, maybe media.net would be a good one as well.

[RedBar]

Total disaster today, this should easily be my lowest-ever day if the almost first 12 hours are concerned.

[dethfire]

Today is very low, but mostly because traffic is down

[Ironside]

Pretty rubbish here as well today, something like £2.60 p from 21 clicks. I don't know, I am more convinced lately that it's got something to do with people using mobile devices.

[azlinda]

Mobile traffic is 55.3% of my traffic today, RPM is low and clicks are few. I've noticed that when there is a lot of mobile traffic, things are worse.

[azlinda]

@Ironside - Media Net is [media.net...]

I am now also using Conversant Media.

[Evan Salamanca]

EPC is sky high. CTR is about the same. Link units have been killing it at both. Taking out the ad unit with the most accidental clicks has been a great move.

[glitterball]

@Glitterball how do you find media.net? I've just signed up for it, however I will probably have to wait a couple of weeks to hear whether I've been successful or not. AdSense is dying for me now, hence me concentrating on other forms of trying to earn money. EBay looks quite exciting, maybe media.net would be a good one as well.

RPM from Media.net is just under 50% of Adsense, however I will run with it for a while to see if it improves as it gets "tuned in".
It may also be that removing some of the supply of ad space has had an effect, though it looks like CTR has improved rather than CPC.

Yesterday was my best day since March (disregarding the invalid click party in April) - thanks to high CTR.

[RedBar]

As expected my lowest-ever click and earnings' day with USA at 30% of average. PVs around my normal for a Sunday.

This may be the month we shall part company if things do not improve drastically.

[Ironside]

How many of you think that this dramatic drop in earnings is due to mobile use?

[Maleda]

@ironside we've definitely experienced a drop due to mobile traffic increasing.

[Ebuzz]

Mobile ads are not clicked easily to avoid accidental tapping. And because of that, most people would happily scroll past them. It would take a determined user to actually click on one of these.

That is likely why most people who converted to responsive websites and ads saw a 50% drop. It may correspond with the current 50% of mobile users who don't click, or rather, tap on anything.

I am sure a lot of mobile traffic is being wasted. My pageviews/impressions are up. My earnings do not commensurate with that at all. Sad.

[netmeg]

I dunno, my traffic is running 65% mobile, and I'm up all over. It'll probably go up as high as 80 to 85% in June and July. The CTR for mobile isn't much lower than desktop, but the EPC (at least in May) was just about half of desktop. What has completely tanked for me this year is tablets.

[RedBar]

How many of you think that this dramatic drop in earnings is due to mobile use?

I don't believe so, overall until the last few days my earnings have been where I expected them to be plus they're also pretty good on mobile/tablet, in fact my CTR for mobile is 161.9% and tablets 156.4% v desktop.

I am definitely seeing lots of irrelevant ads and so many of Google's own ads it's ridiculous.

Here's one to ponder, if an economy is doing well and widget stocks are running low, would you bother advertising?

[breeks]

Very low day yesterday, today average is over a dollar a click. So the usual roller coaster.

Would be nice if Adsense would come up with some attractive mobile ads. I notice mobile search ads look nothing like mobile Adsense, and for good reason I am sure.

[Ironside]

I think the problem that many of us have, including myself is that our niche doesn't necessarily attract relevant ads. For instance, my website is basically a fish keeping website. However, I don't see a lot of really quality ads related to fish keeping. There are a few, but they pay very little. On the other hand, there is a website that addresses home improvements, nearly every ad that they have on each page is related to DIY and home improvements, so they are going to attract clicks straightaway. Normally when I'm browsing a website, Google will actually display ads related to my history of browsing. However, the DIY website I mentioned tends to display relevant ads to their own niche, wish I could get my website doing the same. You are bound to make more money if your AdSense units behave like this.

I'm just working on a couple of websites that are dedicated to a certain niche and that have a massive commercial following, i.e. angling, so I'm hoping that I will see an improvement when they are done in a few months time.

[EditorialGuy]

the DIY website I mentioned tends to display relevant ads to their own niche, wish I could get my website doing the same. You are bound to make more money if your AdSense units behave like this.

I wonder if AdWords/AdSense hasn't become too complicated for the average supplier of acquarium pumps, fish food, etc. Or the average small hotelier or chauffeured-car service, for that matter. The more complicated the system is, and the more options it offers, the harder it is for non-professional media buyers to participate. That's bound to depress competition, bids, and EPC in smaller niches.

[HymnSite]

Like many in this forum, Sunday closed out May in style. The day's revenue was down over 30% from the prior Sunday; the 28-day revenue was down a little over 34% from the prior 28 days. It represents the lowest monthly earnings for my site since 2011. The only comfort is that 7-day revenue was only down a little over 10% from the prior week, so maybe this abysmal performance is leveling out at its new low standard. If this low level continues through the month of June, June will be my lowest month since at least 2009. Quite a disappointing drop. Funny how Google is not projecting similar declines in its own revenue. I will be looking into TrueView in the near term. I have several hundred videos at YouTube. Some of my website traffic is migrating to my videos, and I am not running any ads on those. But I have a plan...

On to June!

[netmeg]

Well I finished up at 130% of last May, and they took out less than 1% for the clawback, so overall I can't complain.