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.

[RedBar]

If it wasn't for some websites that are very aggressive with their advertising

Without doubt the worst offenders in the UK are newspaper sites, most of them are so bad I refuse to visit them.

[eeek]

Without doubt the worst offenders in the UK are newspaper sites, most of them are so bad I refuse to visit them.

It isn't limited to the UK; US newspapers are really bad too. I often end up setting site preferences that turn off javascript to avoid having to wait five minutes for the page to settle down.

[AlexB77]

Just placed a script on every page of one my site that has Adsense on it to see how many visitors are actually blocking ads. Within the first hour out of 100 visits 35 are with blocked ads.

Will leave it there for a week or two to get better picture.

[breeks]

The people blocking ads are unlikely to click on ads. Most of them feel they are entitled to a free ride.
Just a sign of the times.

[trebuchet]

Whether they click or not is irrelevant. Even if adblock use ran as low as 10 per cent and none of them clicked an ad, I'd still be down $100+ a month in CPM revenue.

Plus it's the principle of the thing that irks me. It's like scraping in reverse. Not actually stealing the content but stealing its revenue-generating capacity.

[Ironside]

I personally think I've had my day with good earnings on AdSense. I honestly can't see anything improving in my situation. I'm still getting 3000+ hits a day on my website, but my revenue has dropped to such a low level it really isn't worth bothering with at the moment. Daily earnings haven't even topped £5 For the last couple of days. I find it inexplicable you can be earning £25 every day and then six months later, you're not even earning a quarter .

[Ebuzz]

Just to join the "fun", I too have witnessed my earnings collapse AFTER converting to mobile design/mobile adsense.

The difference is tremendous. I think my CTR went down 80% on one unit, which was the same size as it is today, a 338 x 280 ad unit square block. The CTR before converting to responsive was 1.6% and now, it is 0.36%.

Just imagine, from 1.6% ----> 0.36%.

Just what a HUGE difference. I tried to maintain my site design to mimic my old site, and the main difference now is that it is wider, larger, responsive, and retina-ready. Just amazing.....

All other ad units are suffering 50% reduction in CTR. Overall, my traffic increased somewhat after the conversion, but the bad CTR reduces this advantage to nothing.

[edited by: Ebuzz at 12:46 pm (utc) on May 11, 2015]

[netmeg]

Ironside are you doing any affiliate marketing? With that much traffic and a specific niche such as yours, I dunno why you wouldn't. It sounds like you're an expert in your fish, and people would probably buy products you could legitimately recommend.

The idea of ad blockers is annoying, but I understand why they come about - all the people who plaster ads all over their sites (particularly newspapers, yes) have ruined it for those of us with more restraint. But I look at it as something I can't do anything about. Anyone who hates ads so much that they go to the trouble of using an ad blocker isn't going to click on my ads if I hide my content from him or nag him to turn it off. If it ever comes to pass that ad blockers are installed by default in all the major browsers - well, then I'm going to have to make some decisions. Until then, I'm not going to worry about it.

[avalon37]

Starting about a week ago, due to dropping CTR, I I went from 3 ads per page down to 1. And CTR did not get better - actually a little worse. The ad I kept is in the best CTR location. Makes no sense. I'll leave the less ads for another week, but then I guess I'll add more ads back. Defies logic, but like a lot of things in life "doing the opposite" of what makes sense actually works better.

[Mentat]

Another peanuts meal.
CPC still 50% lower!

[HymnSite]

My historical RPMs ~$1.80
Current month average $1.09
Mother's Day $0.71

May is still looking extraordinarily bad.

[Ebuzz]

I think the consensus is:

Responsive design + ads = VERY BAD.

I just wonder what, if anything is going to be done about this by Google. I have always assumed Adsense was not a priority for them....

[netmeg]

Responsive design + ads = VERY BAD.

Absolutely not the case for me. My sites have been responsive for several years and I'm doing better than ever. Maybe it just takes longer? I dunno. I just started testing the mobile anchor ad too, and while the CTR isn't any great shakes, the EPC is respectable enough (roughly $0.50/click) I'm going to give it a month and see where it is by mid June when I'll have a few million impressions to evaluate.

[Mentat]

Responsive design is not the problem!
I have responsive design for years!

The problem is cpc, how much Google charge advertisers for a click!

The bidding system is broken or a lot of advertisers went on strike!

[RedBar]

Responsive design + ads = VERY BAD.

I'm with netmeg on this and I've been running mostly responsive sites for 2 years now and their CTRs/eCPMs are definitely better than traditional desktop HOWEVER I do serve that information in a completely different way to what I used to therefore it is impossible for me to make any direct comparison.

So far this month my desktop is averaging $0.45, tablet $0.63 and phone $0.38, I'd just like another couple hundred or so clicks a day and I'd be happy again!

[nomis5]

Responsive design works well for me and I'm useless at it. Any drop in earnings is down to something else.

[ember]

netmeg, how is your direct mailing working out?

[Ebuzz]

Well, today I changed my ad color, and it seems to have improved things slightly, but definitely need to monitor things closely. I was using my old ad color for one month after converting to mobile, and somehow, the visitors didn't like it anymore..... - Strange!

Anyway, I have heard and read from more than a few folks that their income tanked after converting to mobile, so.....I don't know.

Also presently, Adsense Link Units are not responsive, and we don't know when they will ever be. Link Units were very good earners for me for years and with great CTR. I took them all off since they were not responsive, and I thought the normal units would make up for them, but so far, not the case.

I would love to use Link Units again...... :(

Maybe like Netmeg says, give it more time.

[Ironside]

@ebuzz I know what you mean about link units, if I try and make them responsive all I get is a full-sized AdSense unit. However, all you need to do is use a link unit that is narrow enough to fit on even the smallest mobile phone screen, I'm currently using ones that are just less than 200 pixels wide, don't seem to be having any issues with them displaying on mobile devices.

[netmeg]

netmeg, how is your direct mailing working out?

Sent out 148 fliers (to start) got about six replies after two days and a smattering after that. Two signups, but one was for one site for a whole year and the other one was for eight sites for two months each. So it's more than paid for itself, and some of the people I mailed to won't even be in business for another two or three weeks. So I'm happy with it so far.

Then one clueless guy left a message that he didn't understand the flyer but he assumed I was offering my (most lucrative) URL for lease, and if so, he'd be willing to pay $100 to "rent" it for the month of June and if it was more than that, don't bother calling back. #peopleunclearontheconcept

[edited by: netmeg at 4:31 pm (utc) on May 11, 2015]

[RedBar]

Monday's EPC is diabolical right now at about 36.7% of May's average and with CTR at 64.7% I can say that things are looking atrocious at the moment...the hamsters have died!

[Ironside]

@netmeg yes, I have been doing some affiliate eBay marketing for a few months now and it's not been too bad. Nothing spectacular, probably averaging about £45 a month. However, this month has taken a complete U-turn, I think I've made about 2p, not sure what's gone wrong. It may have something to do with me removing a bunch of eBay affiliate adverts that were displaying as picture units on some of the pages. When I started changing the website over to responsive mobile, all of these units were too big for the page when displaying on a couple of the mobile phones, so I removed them all. I'm not sure if the eBay affiliate advertising have actually started providing responsive adverts for us. At the moment, I've just linked a load of individual text links amongst my articles, but they don't seem to have provided any income as of yet. What kind of affiliate marketing did you have in mind?

[netmeg]

Meh, eBay. You need to find some better affiliates than that. Look at pet stores and so forth and see if you can find better ones in that space.

[Ironside]

Great advice net, I wonder if PetSmart do affiliate advertising? I will have to check because they've got a massive fish department. What about Craigslist, does that have affiliate marketing?

[Mentat]

I have a question, as I really believe that the May update was about adsense publishers. The first SERP update, with impact on CPC for adsense publishers.

So, the question is:

What was the variation of traffic (sessions) for the week 1-7 May vs 24-30 April?

For me was -10% on traffic, -30% revenue, mostly because of CPC.

I suspect that this update changed the quality score (mostly down) for many publishers, with impact on CPC bidding and traffic.

[hmtweb.com...]

[AlexB77]

OK, almost the end of the day for me here and I have some results on the AdBlocker from my Analytics, for one day only but already have some nice results. UV: 6559 and 579 with all ads blocked. Little bit less than 10%.

I agree with everyone who said that this visitors would not click anyway, but what scares the hell out of me is that this numbers are only going to rise in the future. So the only real option is to rethink entire strategy and get more direct advertiser on the site.

I have only tested my adsense, does anyone have the same experience with Doubleclick?

[netmeg]

Actually I've heard the rumblings about a thin content/doorway update going on. At any rate, I'm up traffic wise and AdSense wise, but as I get closer to summer, that's normal.

[HowYesNo]

poor results continue, ctr cannot be lower, and cpc is also -30%, stupid responsive ads, i'm sacrificing solid ctr because of 10% of mobile visitors, just not worth it

[LuckyD]

Continuing to see huge fluctuations on weekends: earnings up to 50% higher. Since I am in the earlier optimization stages then most members, I can't attribute the fluctuation to Adsense changes or experiments. Overall the trend goes up though.

[MrSavage]

I'm dealing with that happy sad emotion once again. Weekend was juicy. That fell flat on its face starting Monday. However, I still have one pony that can bring it. That's one positive right now. One thing is for sure, the flux in earnings day-to-day is nuts. I've come to accept that as being the norm now.