November 2015 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

Good luck!

[Ironside]

I don't know whether this will be of any help to anyone, but I've been doing quite well with a few 300 x 600 units inserted into paragraphs of text on various articles on my site. I used to use quite a few 300 x 250 units but the larger ones seem to be performing slightly better.

To be perfectly honest, I've become a little bit of a mercenary in the last year or so. My main earning website used to be my "baby" (so to speak :-)) However, I do not keep tropical fish any more so really don't have much of an interest in that field much nowadays. But the fact is, the website makes me money and that's all that interests me now. I used to be a little bit wary about upsetting visitors by putting adverts amongst articles, but now I really don't care at all. It's all about making as much money as possible. And I found that the best way to do this is to be very aggressive with your advertising.

[EditorialGuy]

I don't know whether this will be of any help to anyone, but I've been doing quite well with a few 300 x 600 units inserted into paragraphs of text on various articles on my site. I used to use quite a few 300 x 250 units but the larger ones seem to be performing slightly better.

I tried the 300 x 600 units earlier in the year and wasn't impressed. However, I've been running them again for the last week or so, and they're definitely outperforming the 300 x 250 units (at least for now).

I don't place them within the editorial content, though: They're in the right column of our two-column layout. (I doubt if they'd work any better within the editorial content in any case, since they're hard to miss in the right column.)

[avalon37]

My main site is fashion related so obviously this is my best time of the year in terms of earnings. CTR up over 60% compared to the rest of the year. Tips for other sites that are holiday sales related; go all text ads and make your ads noticeable. I made all my ads ALL RED since the start of the month and it's working. All in all, CTR is up so far this holiday shopping season however CPC prices down a bit. Luckily, CTR up more than CPC is down (for me).

[Ironside]

I have tried making some of my ad units text only, however they still display pictures.

On another note, how many of you blend your advent, and how many of you have had good success with making the ad units stand out, i.e. not trying to match the units in the same colour text etc

[trebuchet]

After an average November I have made a staggering amount of money today. By far the most I've made in a single day. CTR very high and RPM in double figures, which is unknown for my two higher traffic sites. A very nice end to the month (assuming there's no nasty clawback). Hopefully the trend carries into December.

[kireb]

Gotta love Cyber Monday 2015. Record breaking day and RPM. Wish we would have a Cyber Tuesday too.

[trebuchet]

Wasn't aware of "Cyber Monday", which probably explains my record earnings. Perhaps we should have a "Cyber January".

[avalon37]

Yep record AdSense day here too. It doesn't hurt that starting about 4 days ago I got major ranking improvement on a keyword that's delivering around 500 extra visitors a day for the last 4 days. It's a very well know consumer brand so hopefully it will last through Christmas - fingers crossed.

[Ebuzz]

I too had a good November around Thanksgiving season, but it's mixed. Some sites did poorly. I hope December will bring even better results. For me, Cyber Monday isn't anything special though. Coming off from a very bad October, I guess I shouldn't be complaining.

[magician]

Seeing redbar today.

[RedBar]

Just to inject a dose of reality for all you high earners!

November earnings down 8.86% from October.

November 2015 v November 2014 earnings at 49.26% ... Yep it's more than halved in a year with the same traffic, awesome going G, I'd have been voted off my board if my company had performed like this.

Whatever they did in the first week of July has stayed with us.

[ken_b]

Hmmm... I think this number has been around awhile. When I logged off my AdSense Control panel just now I got a "Sign Up for AdSense" with a link to "A few reasons why almost 2 million people have chosen AdSense". I haven't seen that page before, and why show it to someone logging out of AdSense?

I didn't click the link.

But if my memory is right and the 2 million number has been around a while, I wonder if AdSense isn't growing as fast anymore? Or if the churn in publishers is balancing out new sign up?

Any thoughts?

[frankleeceo]

It appears that all end consumer facing sites are doing well whereas the B2B type of adsense sites are suffering.

With the number of publishers, I think the churn had balanced a while back. On top of publisher competitions adsense is also facing somewhat competition from other ad serving networks. Perhaps certain programmatic networks pull adsense ads from time to time too while discounting that as not being a publisher. Overall "adsense" impressions should still be going up though.

For a few sites of mine I see programmatic ad serving outperforming the good old adsense. Especially the completely non commercial buying intent sites that targets non buying individuals that cannot be served with interest based ads.

For what its worth, advertisers and their underlying algos are getting better and better at pinpointing the people that they serve ads to, and the amount of money that we publisher receive is now largely based on the demographic is what I believe. No more building the traffic up will come the money, gotta attract the right crowd at the right place, at the right time.

12/1's rpm is decent compared to end of last month. No beginning of month rpm crash as usual, which is nice.

Saving the money from this holiday season to prepare for the 50% rpm crash come january. For those that do well and relatively new to the game, should do the same too and save instead of buying those nice christmas gifts like I did when I first started haha.

[Ebuzz]

@ ken_b

Yeah, I too noticed this way back when they introduced their new Adsense homepage. The old homepage showing the Go Lisbon video mentioned "over 2 million". And that homepage was in use for years. Now that they switched to the new homepage, it says "almost 2 million people". I've always heard the number at 3 million, so I have no idea why they would say "almost 2 million" now.

But guessing the churn among Adsense employees and what would appear as Google's disinterest in Adsense (not counting YouTube and Admob), I wouldn't put it past an oversight on the part of a new employee who didn't get the facts right when designing the Adsense homepage, and no one bothering to correct it.

[RedBar]

I've always heard the number at 3 million, so I have no idea why they would say "almost 2 million" now.

I know of lots of publishers who've given up not only with AdSense but any form of web advertising because of loss of earnings, many of them simply due to massive reductions in overall traffic, thereby forcing them to direct their marketing efforts in other directions.

The simple fact is that web advertising has changed enormously and died completely for many publishing sites.

I thought I may had removed AdSense altogether by now, December will be dire for me, I doubt I'll reach the minimum, I'll see how January fares however I reckon that'll be it with AdSense.

[kireb]

November 2015 was my second best month ever, just behind May 2015. Total correction/claw back was only 1%.
Great month for me with Cyber Monday making up for the losses of Thanksgiving.

[Yayabobi]

I tried the 300 x 600 units earlier in the year and wasn't impressed. However, I've been running them again for the last week or so, and they're definitely outperforming the 300 x 250 units (at least for now).

One of the best results we've seen is rotating 300*600 with 300*250 in the same ad unit.

[RedBar]

As if my lowest-ever earnings were not enough, finalised took another 2.4%

[Ironside]

How do you rotate 300 x 600 unit with a 300 x 250 unit?