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.

[Evan Salamanca]

I see a lot of folks referencing improved EPC lately. To those who have seen an improvement, what changes have you made in your ads to facilitate this, if any?

[azlinda]

@SnowLeppard - see your inbox.

[Ironside]

@azlinda I think this is definitely worth trying myself. May has got off to a very slow start again. I have actually put some custom search engines onto the site to see if anything happens there. But I think I'm going to concentrate on the 160 x 600 skyscraper units at the moment because they have always perform best for me. I think I may try an experiment and remove all but one ad of some of the main and best performing articles and just see what happens.

[Mentat]

Lowest earnings since 2009!
Abrupt nasty situation.
Payment very, very low in non-US timezones!

[Mentat]

To understand the problem:
February cpc ~ 0.24
April cpc ~ 0.2
May cpc ~ 0.16!

Disaster!?!

[jbayabas]

Sunday was my lowest revenue yet in awhile. So far today it's not looking any better. Yup, disaster is about right.

[Hinso]

Can't see this month as disappointing so far. Perked up well after a subdued April.

[Sillysoft]

I just really hope these stats over the weekend and today are legit and not another click bomb attack. Things look ok, no big page sucking from any ip in my log files, no 100% bounce rates, no xlhost,com showing up in networks and I checked for any traffic from Firefox 27 and I have no traffic from this version. After having a horrible May 1st, the first of the month is my biggest day, I decided to remove this third ad unit I added when updating the websites. Google had sent me emails and messages via adsense telling me I could make more money adding a third unit to my high traffic pages. I finally did it when I made the update to a responsive layout.

But after removing the third ad unit Friday night I had the best weekend in months and so far today I'm on my way to having my best day in almost a year. I wonder if that third ad was deluding the quality of ads being loaded on these pages? My CPC went from 20-30 cents to almost a dollar. My CTR went from 2-3% to 5-7%. But also coincidentally my traffic has gone up for some of my main sites. So this is where I'm nervous something bad is happening, changing the number of ads on a page wouldn't help improve traffic would it? But maybe finally the conversion to a mobile layout is paying off. A lot of my competitors do not have a mobile friendly site and I noticed I'm getting more traffic and more earnings from mobile. Anyone else seeing an increase in earnings and traffic this month?

[ember]

My CPC went from 20-30 cents to almost a dollar. My CTR went from 2-3% to 5-7%.

Fewer ads could explain both. Maybe there aren't enough quality advertisers in your niche so to fill all the slots on a page lower quality, lower bidding advertisers are needed to fill the extra space, resulting in a lower epc. And fewer ads could increase the CTR for the existing ads.

I've tried 3 ads vs 2 ads on a page and haven't seen much difference. Might try one ad and see what happens.

[avalon37]

Adserving (on my site) is absolute garbage today. I am seeing 1 specific advertiser on every page and 3-4 versions by the same advertiser. It's look Google has decided "hey let's ram this advertiser down the users' throat". So ridiculous. And then I was watching like 20 music videos on YouTube and every time an ad came on it was by the same ad. Google...that doesn't work. When people skip an ad they don't want to see it again. Especially not 5+ more times in a row. I know adserving is complicated, but Google is terrible at it. And sure, it's as easily explained as the highest bidder controls the playing field..but that just reinforces the idea that Google can be bought. So user experience...not so much.

I remember constantly sitting in pitch meeting from Google (as far back as 2007) and all they wanted to talk about was how good the YouTube homepage takeover "all day" deal was. It was like $300K for all the impressions for 24 hours. I just checked now and yeah it's still all movie premiere ads paying NOWHERE near $300K for a full day.

Ahhh...Google anecdotes and fancy dinner's out with my account team. Apologies for reminiscing.

[dethfire]

RPM is in the toilet again after a strong end of April

[glitterball]

30% clawback for those two days of click madness - which was more than the entire earnings for those two days.
I imagine Google was especially kind with their refunds to advertisers (at our expense of course).

Might be a good thing - I'm finally going to stop ignoring those emails from Media.net.

[Sillysoft]

Emails from media.net are legit? I get them all the time asking about advertising on my sites. I ignored them because I thought they were just spam. I also have received emails from people claiming they display ads on my site via adwords and want to directly advertise on my site. But again, thought they were spam.

[ember]

Emails from media.net are legit?

This is probably veering off this thread's topic, but yes, they are legit. I've been using them for at least a couple of years. On some days they nearly meet Adsense's RPM; on other days not so much. Great customer service, too.

[netmeg]

Up until recently media.net was the only other network I used - nowhere near as good as AdSense for me, but good for a few thousand a month during high traffic periods. Lately I've been testing Vertoz and they seem to do even better than media.net. None of the others I've tried have even come close.

[Sillysoft]

My bad, I didn't mean to go off topic. Getting back on topic, has anyone seen any difference in earnings and traffic? I definelty have seen a change, I again hope this is because of my efforts to move to a mobile friendly layout. I read a thread over in the Google SEO section that a lot of people are also seeing changes, but not in a good way. They think some new update happened over the weekend, right around the time I noticed changes myself.

[azlinda]

All 42,000 pages of one of my websites are mobile-friendly according to Google's own mobile-friendly tool, but AdSense has only gotten worse, not better.

[dig_dug]

Last month they cut $250 from my earnings, and this month looks like it's gonna be worst than the previous month.

[netmeg]

I'm way up over last May.

[AlexB77]

Me too, I am also way up over last May

[RedBar]

Nice to know AdSense seems to work for some, pity it's such a crapshoot these days for many of us.

The fact is that in MY realworld global industry Google is dead!

Its SERPs delivers nothing whereas it used to be so, so, good, those people at MV really know nothing but manilpulation.

[azlinda]

I know what a major part of my problem is with AdSense. It seems to start off well in the early morning, then it tapers down by late morning, and it's as though Google throws a switch to turn it off. Just pennies and very few visits trickle in during what used to be the best part of the day. This normally lasts around 7 hours, then picks up a tiny bit in the evening. Something is definitely wrong.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Netmeg - Do you use media.net ads on the same website(s) that includes Adsense ads? I'm leery about mixing Adsense with the Yahoo ads--not on the same page but on the same site.

[netmeg]

I use them on the same pages. Have for several years. No worries.

[MrSavage]

Today and yesterday are some of the worst earnings I've had in, I dunno, a long long while. Maybe when I was running a few sites at most.

[HymnSite]

My CTR used to cruise along at ~.8% and RPM at ~$1.80. That has been pushed down to .6% and $1.15 in the past few months. Yesterday crushed to .37% and $0.71. Looking like a bad month ahead.

[glitterball]

I use them on the same pages. Have for several years. No worries.

Thanks for that, Netmeg, I always (wrongly) believed that I couldn't use other ads on the same page.

Earnings are looking very bad for me too this month, traffic is actually going up for the first time in a long time, but it is from mobile devices and the CTR is very low indeed from that traffic.

[Sillysoft]

Im seeing different changes, some sites have increased in traffic, clicks and CPC. But some the traffic has gone up by my CTR is under 1% but the CPC shoots up to almost $2. What the?

[james_09]

After a poor start to the month, I saw my highest days earnings yesterday since December and I am on track for another very good day today. Seems to be down to a nice jump in CPC, not sure how long it will last.

I have yet to get round to converting my site to mobile responsive. This is pretty bad on my part, as my site is about mobile apps and over 2/3 of my visitors come from mobile and tablet! Interestingly enough I have not seen any decrease in visitors, or earnings over the last few weeks.

[MrSavage]

Is happy sad an emotion? That's how I sum up my earnings. On one hand it's horrific, yet on one hand, there is a sliver of excellence. You have a stable of ponies, yet everything you earn comes from just a single pony. Why is that? I'm not sure if my one pony can maintain this pace because it's never been seen before. It's an ugly pony and it's never performed like this. There is no reason for this performance because other ponies are stronger and bigger. Adsense is odd, as am I.