October 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

My AdSense life is almost over, good luck to those who are still earning.

[RedBar]

Everybody seems to be obsessed with CTR but nobody seems to know what's going on.

Quite simply my CTR has halved since the end of June meaning my earnings have also halved since my traffic is slightly up, the reason for me would seem to be atrocious ads and lack of inventory ... I seem to be getting a lot of Google's own digital ads paying about 15-20 cents/click.

Yes, I have tested them to find out!

[azlinda]

Seriously, give the paid LinkedIn access a try if you are looking to sell ads direct.

Thank you! This is great information. I have only one AdSense ad left across 40,000 pages, and that is exiting this week as well. My page views have been climbing higher every day, RPM is in the low double digits (to the right of the decimal), and it's just not worth keeping AdSense around any longer.

[filbiz]

Sept was good, but Oct has been really poor. This is concerning because historically Oct has been my best month and I'm off about 15% from last month and 20% off 2014 Oct.

Mine is October and December thinking that Christmas is near there should be many advertisers that are buying ads.

[filbiz]

So surely if some of you guys are finding that ads are not working any more, why don't you just try different positions, colours, styles?

Done that many times over and over again. But still only a slight improvement then the next day CPC or RPM will dive. I noticed invalid clicks have something to do with it. Installing a WP clickfraud monitoring plugin really helps. It seems that adsense will give your site a penalty if you have many invalid clicks ( maybe smart pricing and clawback). You don't know what is really going on with your site's click activity without the plugin. But the plugin is not fool proof because there are still invalid clicks that can bypass the plugin. At least you will know that there are such kind of activities on your site.

[Ironside]

I think one of the reasons I have improved my earnings as I identified the best performing ads and their positions and stuck them on every single page. My 200 x 90 link unit outperforms every single other ad I have by a country mile. I've got this unit on nearly every page on my website. It's it's followed (not particularly closely) by a 300 x 250 ad and then a 160 x 600 ads. All of my best performing ads are non-responsive. When I did tried non-responsive my earnings dropped.

[avalon37]

Ironside....that 200x90 link unit worked well for me as well (per your suggestion last month), but only for like a week. Then performance of that ad unit tanked. Too bad - it started off strong!

[Ironside]

My theory is because these 200 x 90 unit links always show very relevant keywords, people will click on them, especially when they appear first on a mobile device.

[LuckyD]

Breeks, what other channels do you monetize through?

[jbayabas]

Ive been reading this news about Brian Short, founder of allnurses.com, who committed murder suicide -- killing his whole family and then himself. Found out he had financial problems. His main source of income was online advertising from his site - i'm sure the big percentage of it is from Adsense. His site boasted yearly revenue of $1 million and 3 million unique visitors per month, which is reasonable for that amount of page views at that time.

I was actually almost in same situation as him last year. My revenue was so bad, my wife and I looked at our two young children and contemplated killing ourselves. Really, we almost did. Good thing we talked to a friend and made us realized we have a lot of equity in our home that we could survive without income for a year. Wife also found a job a month later.

Now, my revenue still has not recovered and i have already accepted I am no longer the breadwinner. But no worries, I no longer think of suicide. Wife is so supportive. I also enjoyed my new life as a stay at home dad.

[Ebuzz]

@ jbayabas

That's tragic. NO ONE should ever kill themselves over Google. Any idea whose running his site and receiving his ad monies now? Just a note, unless he is Premium, he cannot make his sidebar ad unit a sticky ad unit. That's against Adsense policy. But nothing new there, people flout their policies ALL the time...

[trebuchet]

[heavy.com...]

It's certainly tragic news. But blaming Google for what has happened may be leaping to conclusions. Declining advertising revenue may be one factor among several - or may not be a factor at all. Perhaps he took on too much personal debt (the article says he lived in a $2 million house). Whatever the reality, I suspect the answers are more complex than falling Adsense RPMs.

[magician]

It's tragic but it's definitely not due to falling adsense RPMs. allnurses.com is big enough to source direct advertisements easily.

On adsense RPM side, Monday was again quite bad in terms of both CTR and CPC.

[magician]

Another thing I've noticed in last few days is that the async ads are taking very long to load on my site which might cause low CTR. Others noticed anything like this?

[filbiz]

@jbayabas

I agree with trebuchet. There maybe other factors for killing his whole family. Depression is really hard to overcome but if you have faith and belief in God, prayers is the only solution. 2013 was the worst and my revenue is really bad because of the Panda and Penguin update. We skip meals but still thankful because even with a little revenue we can still survive. But in the following year my sites rebounded and was very thankful because God answered my prayers. Just think for a second, haven't we thought that all things we enjoy comes from God? If He takes it away from us, He will surely give it back to us if He wants to.

[trebuchet]

Clearly I need to ask God if He'll increase my CTR :-)

[netmeg]

This will be the first year that my AdSense will be the same or slightly less than it was the previous. It was going pretty well till around the middle of the year, then it started a downward slide.

I can point to several things that likely contributed to this, some of which are external and some most definitely circle back to me (unfortunately, as much as I'd like to, I can't find any reason to blame Google for this one) But on the plus side, traffic was WAY up even on the way old sites, even though most of it by far is mobile. And I had more direct advertisers than any previous year. I have a pretty good idea what envintus and I need to do to improve, and a lesser reliance on AdSense (and ad-based revenue) is definitely one part of the plan. Eggs, meet more baskets. Our biggest issue will not be new ideas, it will be finding the time to implement.

[RedBar]

Monday saw PVs at 110% of pre-July/Aug/Sept average however my EPC was way down.

I'm not surprised people are installing adblockers, a friend sent me a link yesterday to a UK newspaper site, holy moly, these people are ruining it for everyone, an utterly horrendous volume of ads coming from all directions taking ages to settle, ridiculous.

[Ironside]

Our local newspaper that has a website is terrible when it comes to adverts. I don't mind adverts that are static and sit to the side or above or below, but I get annoyed when you're reading something and all of a sudden everything moves and an advert appears. The other ones that really hack me off are the big ones that suddenly appear and you've got to wait 10 seconds before you can close them down. Why on earth they ever implemented this type of aggressive advertising I really can't fathom out.

[magician]

Newspapers are worst when it comes to aggressive advertising - ads literally fly from all corners. However, for newspapers, the costs are increasing and offline readership is decreasing everyday. Only option for them is to either have paid online subscription or show ads aggressively. Big ones in developed world have already moved to the paid model but others are still making money only through ads and thus aggressive ads. However, they are the top reason why many people are installing adblockers and thus harming overall online ad industry.

[nubchai]

Is Adsense reporting stuck for anyone else?

[azlinda]

Is Adsense reporting stuck for anyone else?

I wouldn't know as I've removed all AdSense from my site. I'm waiting for DFP AdSense code from Grateful Ventures right now. I'll try it from them in a couple spots. If it doesn't work out, I won't hesitate to remove them completely again.

[Ironside]

I hope things start improving because if they don't it looks as though I might have spoken too soon about earnings increasing each month. Today has got off to really slow start, let's hope it improves.

[Ironside]

I haven't got a red bar, but my earnings are painfully low for the time of day, and I've only reached 25 clicks. It's about 3:30 PM and 2:30 PM further into the US so there's plenty of time for me to make some money.

[nubchai]

Yes, I had some clicks roll in while I was out. Thanks.

[super70s]

That's tragic. NO ONE should ever kill themselves over Google. Any idea whose running his site and receiving his ad monies now?

Check Flippa, you may be able to pick it up for a song. Like the Amityvillle house.

[magician]

Something has gone terribly wrong with adsense in last couple of days. Never seen such a bad RPM in last 5 yrs.

[Mentat]

Yep, FUBAR !
eCPM/CPC is terrible low.

- 600 USD/day since last week

This is madness!

[marsradio]

Adsense is effete. I can find no other word to describe what I believe it has become.

[MrSavage]

My prediction? This monthly thread is going the way of the Google SEO thread, monthly observations. The true tale of SEO enthusiasm can be found in staleness. I mean I might check from time to time, but there is little sense checking my stats only to be frustrated. Not worth it to me. It's dying, my enthusiasm or care in terms of positives. Just like the Google SERPS monthly observations thread, I get the sense that we aren't far off from few participants in these daily adsense earnings discussions. My observation today? Terrible. I'm now looking at this income of hopefully paying off some hosting and domains, but not much beyond that now.

[Bobb11]

Have you today some problem with 300x600 ad unit? Its not displaying. Maybe none advert?