July 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

The start of the summer holiday season for many often with huge ups and downs in traffic.

[hftushar]

Is anyone else seeing widespread double/triple adserving for the last 4+ days?

YES. I'm seeing this. In my guess, This is the main reason of sudden drop of adsense revenue.

[webcentric]

Just saw a site serving 100% ezoic ads (three to a page) on every page of the site. They're Adsense ads but I'm guessing served via ezoic. Is inventory really that low right now?

[avalon37]

webcentric...this is not an inventory issue. Not a chance. This is AdSense incompetence issue - nothing else. They absolutely screwed up so many things starting 2 weeks ago. The login link UI changes daily - which means they know they have known issues but don't now how to "fix it". This 3x ad serving issue - they have no idea to fix. They don't or else they would have by now. This is AdSense at its' lowest. They don't have engineers on this that are competent to fix this yet. Total mess - no other way to describe it. Absolutely not an inventory issue.

[pmf123]

by the "This 3x ad serving issue" do you mean when you get the same 3 ads on the same page? if so, i've been getting that a lot

[ember]

I've been seeing 3 of the same ads per page for a couple of days, too, but only on my own machine. When I try a friend's machine (laptop), I see 3 different ads.

[IanCP]

@pmf123

am i the only one who got a 200% increase in "invalid click activity" from May-June, and a massive 1500% increase for April-May... ?

No you are not, I can't remember my actual figures - however when I queried it with AdSense, all I was given was a list of links to pages with "cryptic" possible causes. These were either non-applicable, or fell into the category of "how the hell would I know?".

To maintain the integrity of our filtering tools and to prevent users from circumventing the system, we can’t share any specific details on where or how much invalid activity might have been detected on your site. Based on your comments, I’ve compiled a list of steps to help you identify the issue and prevent future problems by using resources such as Google Analytics and your site logs:

1. Investigate any changes in traffic sources^*over the last 90 days. - * [support.google.com ]
2. Review any website optimizers^* you’ve worked with that are driving traffic to your site - * [support.google.com ]
3. Review our best practices for how you can prevent invalid activity¹ and visit our Ad Traffic Quality Resource Center.²
[1] - [support.google.com ]
[2] - [google.com ]

After awhile, I simply gave up. There may be smarter people than me here to offer clear cut solutions to the problem.

Ironically, I had to point out to AdSense that my sites have not changed at all from the days before Google came into being, and well before AdSense was ever invented.

[Mentat]

Saturday was like 4h of July, but was 12 of July!
FUBAR

[RedBar]

This double/triple/quadruple ad serving has been going on for quite some time now however this week seems to have been worse than ever. I checked half a dozen pages on one of my sites a couple of days back, 2 ads per page, and every ad was the same company, pointless, utterly pointless.

It's as if their IBA tracking has gotten stuck, "we may know your subject however we can't serve up anything else"!

Plus when using a proxy server their ad relevancy goes completely out of the window, they haven't a freakin' clue what my sites are about most of the time ... unless, yes, unless the proxy happens to be in the USA and then, miraculously, they serve on-topic ads.

Fubar? Someone, some people, have left the building and the kiddies left in charge haven't a clue!

[webcentric]

Turned off IBA's yesterday just to see what type of ads I get without that feature turned on. Adsense isn't my biggest problem these days but it's irritating enough to warrant some serious deliberation.

[avalon37]

IBA's have consistently outperformed contextual for me month over month for 2+ years now. However, my categories are consumer shopping. What's holding me back on IBA's not being even better is that AdSense is showing a low % of RIch Media ads. Rich media IBA's work the best for me.

[dan3s]

Less ads by Adsense have caused lower RPM, so less CTR, less earning, and traffic is on the way of downtrend. The worst year ever in the last 6 years.

[ember]

Everything is out of whack this morning. CTR and EPC are way down. Numbers look better in analytics, but something is amiss. I hope it's just a reporting issue.

[RedBar]

Friday I had my best day of the month and best day since June 1st, Saturday had my lowest EPC of the month and Sunday my second highest EPC, I'm feeling queasy with all these ups and downs.

[eek2121]

July has been utterly brutal. Despite record traffic (most from the US), I'm getting RPMs WAY under a dollar. I noticed that ads are repeating as well.

[Calum_Jones]

Seeing the same ad 2 or 3 times on every page, CPC for mobile ads is EXTREEEEEEEMELY low. Pennies per click, used to be $0.50ish a click on mobile for me. Is this AdSense's problem or is there something wrong which I need to address?

[ember]

Talked to support about the repetitive ads - same one in every slot on every page - and she couldn't see it from her end. She told me to block the advertiser I kept seeing, and that seems to have worked. Ads seem back to normal. At least from what I see. Who know what anyone else sees.

[AlexB77]

I have just noticed that some Rich Media adds that use Flash are blocked in Firefox, which is now done by default in Firefox. Is G planning to do anything about it?

[Mentat]

FF blocking Flash might be a reason why today I have peanuts prom Adsense!
CPM is close to weekend CPM, very low!

[avalon37]

Duplicate ads on the same page issue seems fixed. And not surprisingly my CTR and earnings are back to normal.

[pmf123]

Had second best day ever yesterday... something got fixed

[netmeg]

Wow yesterday I saw three ads from the same company on one of my sites - it was obviously remarketing, targeting me with an SEO tool that I already subscribe to. Doesn't seem really productive, but I was probably the only one who saw it.

[nubchai]

Yesterday was excellent and today is off to a good start too. Fingers are crossed.

[trebuchet]

All good here. Last couple of days have seen RPM about 30% above the June average. Today looks to be going the same way.

[RedBar]

Utter garbage "earnings" here, not a single click from the UK/US today ... now what have they broken?

Maybe it's the black arial bold fonts I am seeing on my main sites?

[RedBar]

My EPC is the lowest since 4th March with only one other day lower this year, horrible, again.

[Bobb11]

My EPC too. Too low... But i think every tuesday I have bad earnings.

[Mentat]

Very bad Tuesday. Something is not right :(
Very low CPC/eCPM, not normal.

It was not a Flash/Browser problem. The problem seems to be in the Text ads area...

[RedBar]

A disastrous Tuesday with ridiculous metrics with the culprit being especially the US with the following :

PVs 147.6%
Clicks 175%
CTR 108.4%
EPC 34.2% My lowest of 2015
RPM 37.7%
Earn 55.5%

The UK's metrics did not fair much better either, what the heck happened? Every advertiser bidding the lowest they could all on the same day all at the same time ... FUBARD!

[Calum_Jones]

Signing up to Media.net... Awaiting approval into their program. CPC has died.

[nyc863]

observation: I find page views inversely correlated with RPM. It looks to me like adsense allocates good ad stock to domains in advance, based on past traffic, so if you have more traffic than anticipated, your page RPM drops. The best RPM is the first third to half of the day then it drops and drops and the more pages/ads shown in a day, the earlier the RPM slide happens.

I've tried to explain it as ads being more effective in the morning but none of that stacks up. The ad quality just declines as the day wears on. Then refills the next day. At least, that is what it seems like.

anyone think this theory makes sense?