June 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

Here we go again!

[MrSavage]

Today was impressive. I am impressed. I am easily impressed because a while ago I wouldn't call this impressive. However, for what I get on average, this is relatively impressive.

[RedBar]

Needless to say things have not improved, Sunday saw my lowest-ever AdSense PVs and earnings. Even people in very low cost countries would laugh at these dirisory levels.

[RedBar]

And today's EPC from the USA is running at 21.7%, a CTR of 60% and with an RPM of 13.51% ... WTF?!?!

I can't even buy a glass of milk with these metrics.

[EditorialGuy]

Up yesterday, last 7 days, and last 28 days.

For us, it's all about the time of year.

[breeks]

i removed responsive ad code from sidebar and replaced with 160 x 600 code. After 5 day test income is over 200% better than responsive ad code.

300 x 600 ads that were showing with responsive ad code looked cool especially image ads but didn't convert. Text ads in 300 x 600 had extremely low RPM due to 10 ads per unit.

Just a thought for today :)

[jbayabas]

@breeks. Nah, you'll see that after awhile , it will go back to the same dismal numbers.

[EditorialGuy]

Breeks: Interesting. I've been experimenting with some 300 x 600s (to replace 300 x 250s) and haven't been impressed by the results so far.

[breeks]

Nah, you'll see that after awhile , it will go back to the same dismal numbers.

has gone from dismal to mediocre

[RyuUK]

Also recently updated to using 300 x 600 units. These definitely get the attention of the user, but this makes little difference when the targeting is poor. A list of 10 ads is a lot. It's more annoying when they stick one at the top and a blank space below. They should just split it into 2.

[Ebuzz]

@breeks. Nah, you'll see that after awhile , it will go back to the same dismal numbers.

Agreed. My testing has confirmed there is no difference between a responsive / non responsive unit if they are the same size and shape. The massive drop in CTR (after late April) is inexplicable though, although we can only guess why.

So far, my CPC is either the same as before or better, but the low CTR is still highly worrying. A higher CTR may not mean more earnings, since Google has "Smart Pricing" built in which will always lower the CPC, but still, this is way too low for me.

[trebuchet]

Yes, CTR just continues to find new lows on my sites. Yesterday was a tick over half the average. CTR for the United States, usually my best clickers, was ridiculously low. User habits can't have changed this quickly so I can only conclude that Google has raised the bar for legitimate clicks.

[RedBar]

Monday saw my highest AdSense PVs since March, CTR was down on average and so too was US EPC meaning earnings were down on average but it was nice to see that higher traffic. Is this the so-called "quality" update maybe?

[avalon37]

Google's ad targeting seems worse than normal this month, however financially the month has been decent.

[netmeg]

I'm cool. Not as ahead as I thought I'd be, but the late date for Father's Day is messing things up.

[nubchai]

Things are improving here too. PVs, CTR and RPM are up on all my sites. I wish I knew why.

[ken_b]

Doing ok, not great, but ok

[Ebuzz]

Page views and impressions are all up, substantially, I may add. But earnings do not commensurate with that at all, and the low CTR is to blame.

How much of that is my problem, and how much of that is Google's problem, is a BIG question mark.

[RedBar]

For me Tuesday was an average days as it's possible to have, no spikes, no lows, average CTRs, EPCs, the lot, all across the board, what happened?

[Ironside]

If I carry on as I am at the moment, this month's earnings will probably come close to last months, so middle-of-the-road for me. I thought I was seeing a slight increase, but it's dropped off slightly. I think if it stayed like this then I would live with it, at least it would be fuel for the car for the month, plus a few takeaways and my day ticket money for fishing.

[RedBar]

Extraordinary low PVs from the US so far today at only 7.6%, ok it's early in a US day however I don't remember seeing such low numbers.

[trebuchet]

Same here Redbar. Only saw my first US click about six hours into the day too. No holiday that I'm aware of so reporting must be held up.

[Ebuzz]

CTR meltdown today. The worst start to the US day, that I have seen thus far.....

[Ironside]

£4.85 generated from three clicks. Page RPM £14.29, impression RPM £14.29. Page views 339, impressions 339. The particular page in question is top of the shot on Google for just about any search term that includes the words cloudy and fish tank or aquarium and gets a shed loads of hits every day. I'm hoping that someone will realise the potential.

If only there was a surefire way of getting most users who visit this page to click on one of my ads. The page probably receives about 700 hits a day, if I could get 200 clicks, I would be well in the money each month. Any advice on this situation?

[netmeg]

200 clicks on 700 pageviews might raise a flag at AdSense. There's no way around it, you can't encourage clicks or even call attention to the ads. It would probably be more productive to work on getting more pages with more traffic. 700 "hits" (by which I assume you mean either pageviews or visits) isn't really all that much in the grand scheme of things.

When I search on those terms, your page comes up at top, but there's only one ad running for it (in Google) That's kind of a red flag, because if there's only one ad showing on the Google search page, there may not be enough ad inventory to make that a really successful page on its own. It's a useful page and it ranks really well for a common problem, but the contextual ads just don't seem to be there.

On the other hand, there might be a way to make it pay. If there's only ONE ad showing for that term in Google, and no affiliate possibilities, if it were I, what I might do is buy that product that's advertising, try it myself, and then post a review of it on that high ranking page. That might attract the ad to show on that page, and if the review is honest, possibly people will buy it right there.

Otherwise, I'd try checking on the ad availability for the topics of my pages, and make sure there's enough inventory there. And don't forget - some advertisers ONLY advertise on Google's search pages, and not the Display Network. So it's possible their ads will never show up on your site. (Me, I'd contact them directly to ask them if they'd be interested in direct advertising, but I realize not everyone wants to mess with that)

[RedBar]

Weird, still completely whacky US PVs compared to my logs, so far 24.5% of US average and 9.7% of overall PVs...way, way, way outta sync!

[AlexB77]

@Ironside I have actually visited your site on many occasions as I do have an aquarium and had problems with cloudy water in it, so thanks for your advise.

The ad that I have seen there is actually irrelevant to your niche at all it is about some water softeners for properties. So I personally would get a list of pet shops and start calling them to offer them direct advertising as Google may be really short on the advertisers in the very specific field like yours. Plus I would also move the links only add to the top before your side navigation menu.

[Ironside]

Thanks guys, some very interesting information to ponder over. You are absolutely right though, there is not really much relevant information that can be displayed on a webpage that is dealing with cloudy water in an aquarium. If you think about it, the only thing that I can think of that would be available to buy for this problem is just a small bottle of chemical, but you never gonna make a fortune out of that. Plus, it's such an easy problem to fix that not many people would even bother buying it. I suppose what I'm hoping will happen is when people go to the page, the ads are actually displaying information relevant to their own search history. When I'm browsing my website, and other websites I am bombarded by Google ads that are relevant to watches (I collect watches) fishing and sometimes disability websites if I been looking at something to do is disable driving or wheelchairs. Does that make sense?

To be honest, I don't think there are many aquarium shops that bother doing Google advertising, most of them are just high-street shops that probably don't have the money to do that kind of advertising. There are some big name businesses that I have never seen appear on my AdSense units. PetSmart is about the biggest and most common shop in the US that deals with aquatic goods, I don't see them ever, and since there are many search terms that brings my site top at the very top of Google, you would have thought that they would have decided that my site is probably worth advertising on, especially as most of my visitors are from the US

:-), I just picked 200 clicks out of the air Net. You would think that when you are getting 700 people visiting the page every day, 200 of them might click on the ad, I'd be earning a nice little amount from that many clicks. But like you guys have said, if I can put a really relevant advert in its place, in between the heading and the content, that is really attractive to visitors, then the chances are many people will click on it. Just got to find the right way of doing it, I'm convinced there is quite a bit of money to be made from this page, just got to find a way of doing it

[MrSavage]

Holy crap moment. Eyes bulged. A double take. Indeed, good number on my one pony who is outperforming the entire stable. I'll take it. One word sums it up today. Juicy.

[Ebuzz]

I don't know about you guys, but for me........there can be NO conspiracy any more. And I am pissed.

Google is severely discounting (probably even stealing) your clicks. A simple analysis of my traffic for the SAME time period of June 1 -June 17 for both 2014 and now 2015 reveals some shocking details.

My traffic increased by 300+% overall on ALL my sites, but my income decreased by about 35% overall. Let me repeat, over THREE TIMES more traffic, but earnings drop significantly.

True, maybe some of them are invalid traffic (I do not spam social media at all for traffic), but it cannot be this BAD. I'm not the only one reporting this, MANY others are reporting inexplicable plunges in revenue, starting in the last few months....

What is the point of getting more traffic when the more traffic you get, the lower amount of clicks you get, and the lower you earn? They keep shifting the damn goal posts!

[Ironside]

Weird, yesterday was my second best day this month, but not as many clicks for money less than half the amount I got yesterday. I have put my link unit on top of the menu, I think this is going to make a difference