August 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

I'll start it however I doubt I'll be contributing very much!

[Chronos Slayer]

Now I know I am not alone, the adsense earning went down so much this summer I thought it will go back up this month. but it went down even more. Last year this time was great, no idea whats going on !

[Ebuzz]

Portland, the first wave started in January, the second wave started in May, that's true. I wonder if they keep the money under the pseudo name of "smart pricing". They might smart price and keep the difference. You know where greed (money) is there is no truth. All those companies are greedy as hell. Trusting them is like trusting someone who comes like a thief in the night.

The transparency they offer is non-existent. Without transparency they can do what they love to do and live their life full of greed.

Their status symbols, positions and powers is all they love in this world and this is what keeps their greed alive. Therefore they have to take away from the mass.

Dead right. The first down move was in January and the next major move was in May. August is looking like another downward move.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the entire program if a major meltdown occurs in global economies worldwide. Their move to split things up may make it easier for them to disengage themselves from any of their divisions if needed.

Same advice as before - Diversify, if you don't want to get shafted.

[trebuchet]

Their status symbols, positions and powers is all they love in this world and this is what keeps their greed alive. Therefore they have to take away from the mass.

Wow, that's pretty heavy. Not sure I'd be so conspiratorial but I've got no doubt that Google is milking publishers to protect its bottom line. Actually I'd be surprised if they weren't doing that.

My Adsense earnings are up over the last 12 months, however I put that down to (a) increases in traffic, and (b) a 30% decrease in the value of our dollar vs. US dollar. Take those out of the equation and I'd be well down.

[marsradio]

Portland, the first wave started in January, the second wave started in May, that's true. I wonder if they keep the money under the pseudo name of "smart pricing". They might smart price and keep the difference. You know where greed (money) is there is no truth. All those companies are greedy as hell. Trusting them is like trusting someone who comes like a thief in the night.

The transparency they offer is non-existent. Without transparency they can do what they love to do and live their life full of greed.

Their status symbols, positions and powers is all they love in this world and this is what keeps their greed alive. Therefore they have to take away from the mass.

I couldn't have said this better myself. Google makes me sick, and I hope their karma comes calling....and soon!

[trebuchet]

The transparency they offer is non-existent. Without transparency they can do what they love to do and live their life full of greed.

Their lack of transparency is infuriating to honest publishers like us. But a lot of it is done for a purpose. Too many fraudsters out there to be laying all your cards on the table.

[glitterball]

Much better day yesterday thanks to improved CTR - seems strange that there would suddenly be better Ads on a Sunday?

Not seeing any suspicious numbers, just better CTR on 3 (unrelated) sites.

[Mentat]

So, I've blocked google.com but today I saw google.de ads...

Blocked:
google.com
google.ca
google.de
google.fr
google.co.uk
google.it
google.es
google.ch
google.gr
google.jp

[avalon37]

glitterball, too have seen a strong positive increase in CTR and CPC prices yesterday that has carried over into today so far. The previous 5 days was the worst stretch ever for me; I'm guessing some of yesterday and today's clicks were from middle of last week finally getting "approved"/"posted".

[trebuchet]

Yes I've noticed some very delayed payouts. Adsense showed three high value clicks on a rarely used channel today. When I went back through analytics/stats it appears they were clicked three days earlier. They obviously had to go off for Sergey's approval or something, before being paid.

[netmeg]

When I went back through analytics/stats it appears they were clicked three days earlier.

I see that a lot. I'm convinced that some clicks take longer to validate than others, specially with this new anti-fraud technology they are using.

Anyway, I'm always finding new reasons why clicks, CTR, revenue metrics are down.

Recently I took over a PPC account for a client, and one of things I found in it was that they had advertised bigtime in the Display Network, but turned it off because they weren't getting anything back in the way of conversions or engagement.

When I went in to look at their placements, I found that their previous PPC Manager had neglected to prevent their ads from showing up in mobile apps and games (and thanks a pantload, Google, for turning those on *by default*) So all their Display spend got eaten up by mobile apps (and no doubt accidental clicks) before it even *got* to a publishers site.

I bet there's a lot of this going around.

[nyc863]

Its been well over a week since I blocked google.com ads and all metrics remain higher than the last three months: higher page RPM, higher CTR, higher ad RPM -- and of course as a result higher $ on each day, with the same traffic.

To get a similar bump with elbow grease I'd have to do a LOT of work: finding new ways to squeeze in extra ad units on pages with formats that vary from short to long and now just display 1 ad unit, and so on and so forth. Time I'd rather spend decreasing bounce rate and increasing pages per session and other more important things.

[Ironside]

@NYC that's very encouraging, how did you block Google.com ads? I might try it myself, I seem to get an awful lot of them and I can't believe for one minute that they are paying any thing more than a pittance for each click, why would they?

[avalon37]

Yesterday was my best day of the year. But Google "stopped" clicks at about 5pm EST and to date no clicks yet today. So currently in the all too familiar "penalty" box until they sort out if the clicks were valid or not. Fun times.

[Ebuzz]

Anyone noticed the scorecards disappeared?

Mine are gone. Totally useless and I guess they admit it finally.

[Ironside]

I have a 200 x 90 link unit on just about every page on my website, it's located above the left-hand menu. I just checked minutes ago and I've had 1009 page views, and 1005 impressions on this unit. So why is it I have a notice in my AdSense account telling me that I can increase my predicted earnings by 20% if I make this link unit more viewable because at the moment it's only being seen 1% of the time. That just doesn't make sense. Are they talking about people clicking on the links?

[Ironside]

How do you find the URL of flash AdSense banners? I get bombarded with adverts from host Gator. Is it as simple as just putting in their main URL or are they using a different URL for the advertising?

[breeks]

They are rolling out the new reporting UI to everyone. Gone score card and CPC report. They don't want you to see how little they are paying per click.

The idea is to get publishers to focus on RPM not CPC. Easy enough to figure out the pitiful CPC though

[Ironside]

Unless my impression RPM drastically improves, as well as my page RPM I am never going to replicate what I was earning 16 months ago. For instance, January 12, 2014 my page RPM was £4.07 and my impression RPM was £1.92, that day I earned £30. Compare that to my best day this month, page RPM £2.65, impression RPM 96p. And I earned £14. I can only dream of going back to what it used to be like. Thing is, my page impressions were less than a month I've been getting in the last week or so. However, my clicks were definitely quite a bit up, although a few days I was getting the same as what I've got now, but I was still earning slightly more. Even if I did add another 30 clicks each day, I wouldn't be anywhere near what I was earning back then. I can't see Google recovering to the good old times.

[breeks]

Today lots of traffic, however, today is looking like the worst Adsense day in 10 years. Affiliate sales doing great, Adsense sucking big time.

[ember]

Best RPM is ages. No idea why. And I do not like the new interface.

[avalon37]

Yesterday I had over 50 clicks which was a great day for me. Today 1 click so far - yeah right Google. Oh wait - new reporting interface today which is par for the course on days anything is changed.....publishers seem to have poor days when Google makes changes that day. It's happened too many times recently.

[Runfun]

Lol it seems to happen everyone once in a while. Normally I've a really stable CPM with about 6,000 visitors a day and an average of 10 pageviews a visitor. Sometimes there's suddenly a drop in CPM of 30%-40% and I just can't believe that's right.

[azlinda]

My AdSense ads are almost gone. I'm making more with media.net, gourmet ads and Conversant.

[SEOPTI]

Is there some sort of economy downturn in the US? Otherwise it's impossible to explain the drop in EPC. But maybe netmeg is right and mobile apps burn up the budget for most adwords clients so there is no place left for desktop If this is the case they need to fix it in their system.

[RyuUK]

Not a fan of the new interface, so opted out.

CTR has been good recently, CPC as before (55/60%).

Smartphone usage continually on the rise.

[netmeg]

I'm not crazy about the new interface either (have had it for quite some time, but I kept opting out) Apparently it's gone for good as of August 31, so enjoy it while you can.

[ken_b]

Looking back at the averages of my entire AdSense history I'm currently getting about 30% lower CTR but double the EPC. So on a RPM basis I'm doing ok.

.

[rveram]

August 2015 will be my worst month in 9 years. CPC is extremely low.

[marsradio]

August 2015 Adsense = EPIC FAIL!
Total and complete rubbish!

[Ironside]

@azLinda I've also got media.net adverts on a couple of my websites. Certainly not doing anywhere near as well as AdSense, but it could be quite good if I got the advertising right. I think I'm up to about $20 so far this month. What are your best performing ad sizes, and where are they placed?

I went into blocked ads yesterday and selected everything to do with Google and blocked them, however I am still seeing Google ads showing on my website this morning.