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.

[Sillysoft]

But cant you force Google to load ads based on content rather than search history? Im pretty sure there is an option in Adsense that tells Google not to load ads based on users history.

[breeks]

Yes you can see what your visitors see if you open your site in Incognito

Doesn't make any difference Incognito will not show you what a visitor sees. What they see is based on their search history, location, gender and any other info the big G has on them.

[Maleda]

@sillysoft There's an option under Allow & Block Ads > Ad Serving where you can switch off interest-based ads - is that what you're looking for?

[breeks]

You can opt out but the devil is in the fine print :)

"You can opt out of showing ads that are based on user interest and demographic categories (for example, 'sports enthusiasts' or 'inferred age: 18-34'). In turn, Google will not use visitation information from your sites to help create interest and demographic categories. However, you cannot opt out of showing ads to users based on their previous interactions with the advertiser, such as visits to an advertiser's website."

[RedBar]

RedBar please! I'm at about 13% of where I'd expect to be with clicks alone, ridiculous, again.

[nomis5]

'Course I haven't been paid yet, so...

A minor point!

Report back when payment has been made, sounds worth a try.

[netmeg]

Well yea. I will.

[Mentat]

From e-mail

Dear Customer,

DoubleClick for Publishers is currently experiencing reporting issues. Reports are not displaying metrics correctly when editing an existing report or running ad hoc reports. We are working to resolve this issue.

Ad serving is not affected.

At this time we do not have an estimate for when this issue will be resolved. We will send an update by 4pm ET.

[avalon37]

Terrible CTR last couple of days, high CPC though.

[ember]

Course I haven't been paid yet, so...

So a nice account rep set things up for me, and I am going to test them out (Vertoz). Their image ads - all I have seen so far - look identical to Adsense and so far the advertisers look to be the same, too. We shall see.

[azlinda]

I signed up for Vertoz, cannot find any ad tags, and no one responds from support.

[trebuchet]

The ads you see are not the ads visitors see. Even if you clear cookies you still do not see the same ads.

I wasn't born yesterday, breeks. I look at my site through naked browsers from a variety of geolocations. That doesn't account for cookie-driven interest based ads of course, only contextual ads, but that's where my money tends to come from. And as I said, the quality of those at the moment tends to suck.

[trebuchet]

My god things are awful. Saturday's are always slow but today takes the cake. CTR and RPM both 75 to 100% down on usual Saturday figures. Halfway into the day and I still don't have enough for a decent meal. If Adsense had testicles I think I'd kick them.

[netmeg]

I signed up for Vertoz, cannot find any ad tags, and no one responds from support.

You won't see ad tags until your site has been approved. If you just signed up, I expect they will get back to you.

[RedBar]

Disastrous Saturday, lowest PVs of the year except for 1st January. A decent meal? It's years since I earned that much in one day, I can't even afford the most basic burger in China let alone Europe.

Things are so quiet that for the first time in 15-18 years my three major email accounts have not even had any spam today...now that's more than coincidental!

[azlinda]

@Netmeg - My site was approved by Vertoz, and they emailed me four days ago to tell me that the tags were there, but they are not.

[nubchai]

Having a pretty good day here, but not sure why lol.

[MrSavage]

Far beyond my expectations. Bring it. I have lots of room in my pockets for the pennies!

[Mentat]

May seems to be a nightmare.
It's like 50% of April, and April was a record bad month.
The CPC still very low, Adsense rep very quiet!
From 0.24-0.2 CPC, now I have 0.14 !

I've told him that with this kind of money I'm dead, I cannot sustain my business and he replied: "It's that bad?"

[i.imgur.com...]
This is marked as medium!

[MrSavage]

LOL, sorry. My response was "Oh F!"

[avalon37]

This month is the most up and down (by day) I've ever seen. And yesterday I got a really high paying click at like 2pm so it "tripped" the AdSense algorithm so shut down any additional earnings for the rest of the day. I love that feature they have.

[RedBar]

So January 1st and 2nd have been my lowest PVs of the year, May 9th equalled Easter Saturday April 4th for third lowest of the year, what the heck is going on?

I love that feature they have.

Yep, I also have that feature, it's so well refined and works perfectly every time.

[Ironside]

Things are just awful here at the moment. I'm really thinking then I'm going to have to try and do a test period concentrating on mobile users since I'm getting a lot of people who are obviously using my website from a mobile device. So I'm looking for a couple of tips if possible. Without giving away your secrets, which unit in which position work really well for you on mobile devices?

[Maleda]

I'd be really keen to hear about other people's positive mobile experiences too @Ironside - maybe a new thread would be good?

[Mentat]

The problem with mobile traffic is that:
1. is rising and rising
2. it has CPC and CTR very low.

There is no magic solution for this.

I believe that we see an adsense reactor core meltdown!

[Ironside]

I use a program called Crazy Egg which is actually very clever. One of its functions is to give you a heat map of a particular web page that you choose to get it to monitor. It will indicate where people have touched the screen, probably when strolling down on a mobile device. I have found that 160 x 600 skyscraper unit placed in the left-hand column just above the menu tends to get a lot of activity. However, I'm wondering if Google have cottoned onto this and are now taking the money away straightaway of somebody accidentally clicks on one of these ads. Because I don't actually own a mobile phone at the moment, I don't know whether or Google ads open up as soon as you touch the screen, or whether you have to touch the screen twice.

I have tried various different layouts, to be honest I'm running out of different ways to display ads. We've always been told that ad unit displayed above the fold perform the best.So I've always made sure that I either have 160 x 600 skyscraper in the left-hand column, or an ad unit above the content and below the heading. I've changed all of my AdSense to responsive, they all now seem to display as 720 x 90 banners when placed on the page. But when you view them on a mobile device they look great. Also, depending on your particular niche really does depend on whether you can tailor your ads to your website content. From what I can tell, Google AdSense will follow your browsing history. I was looking at bullion by post today, every website I visit that have AdSense is showing adverts from bullion by post. So I can only imagine that our website is performing exactly the same way.

How many people on here click on AdSense units on other websites? I bet the answer is not many? I certainly don't. I know that creating deceptive ads is completely against the rules. But I really think that the majority of people's revenue comes from websites with lots of visitors who will just click on ads willy-nilly, especially if they are in the right place.

[Mentat]

I've just received a very interesting e-mail.
Indeed, the Adblock is now more than a "pain in the a**", it's a big problem for the survival of free content.

Since the AdBlock tool is in the game, and getting bigger volume on daily basis , most of the websites , especially those who monetize using display options are losing an important percentage of their revenues, and i believe that the same is happening with yours.
*** is an Israeli Startup, who found a solution for this issue, our solution can spot if the user is using the AdBlock tool, for those user's who are using we ping back our adserver and fill again the empty spaces with premium display ads(please see our brochure attached), bringing back the revenues for the publisher.

Our platform is integrated into several large RTB systems that give us global demand-coverage, with near-perfect fill rates for every country in every category.
Advertiser moderation is definitely possible for categories (Adult, Gambling, etc), and specific advertisers as well (if there are specific competing sites/services).
Regarding misleading ads (button� banners, flash game banners, fake dating services etc.)
- our demand partners do not allow on their networks at all; everything is IAB approved under high standards.
If you have any specific direct advertisers that you are already working with and are interested in running though our network as well, this is also something that can be done after a while. We can set them up as advertisers on our platform and they can bid on some/all your traffic.

Regarding the page load effect: our engine kicks in only in ad-blocking users, and only after the page has been loaded fully and the ads have failed to load. The loading times of the ads after that are completely standard.

I'm sure that our solution can increase around 20-30% of your display revenues, and i will be glad if you will be up to run a test.
Please let me know if you have any questions, and if this proposition is relevant for you so we will be able to go further.

[RedBar]

Believe this or not. If it were not for one mobile phone user in The Maldives today I would not have any clicks whatsoever!

AdSense has had an almost fatal heart attack on my sites, a couple of more days like this and it will be gone since I may as well use the space to promote my own products.

[trebuchet]

Adblock is now more than a "pain in the a**", it's a big problem for the survival of free content.

I agree, Mentat. I've done some auditing that reveals 12-15% of visitors to my sites use Adblock. Some people aren't happy enough getting something for free, they've also got to deprive the publisher of revenue, just because their poor little eyes are offended by one or two ads. The Chrome extension seems to be the worst offender, I'm surprised G allows it.

[Ironside]

If it wasn't for some websites that are very aggressive with their advertising, people probably wouldn't be too bothered about adverts showing.