January 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

Here we go again ... I'm actually quite surprised I'm still earning more than the minimum!

[trebuchet]

Just dropping in to say that my CPC/RPM rates are absolute rubbish at the moment. Much worse than the first week of January the previous three years. Hopefully they follow previous years and start to pick up and recover around the 7th and 8th.

[magician]

I would say out of every ten to 12 pages views I would get a text ad

It's very very strange. It's possible that adsense bot might not have indexed your site properly so contextual ads are not working but interest-based ads should always be available.

Were you running your site in incognito mode (and signed out from google) during the testing?

[Ebuzz]

Dec was quite good for me but ECPM was not as good as Thanksgiving, and very noticeably trailed off after Christmas, until it was half of what Thanksgiving would have earned.

New Years day was quite rubbish despite gobs of traffic. Looks like this is similar to what most others are experiencing (if your niche is holiday-friendly).

Now, comes the thump back to earth and it's not looking good. If 2015 was bad, I shudder about 2016....

[Juniya]

Honestly, January is usually a month where you should expect lower eCPM/RPM because as stated, most advertisers have exhausted their budgets and that means most customers have already bought what they want.

You should expect better numbers by Mid February for most industries but don't be surprised if it takes others all the way until April for the numbers to settle, it's just how it goes, especially if your niche is season dependent.

[MrSavage]

Yesterday took a nose dive in a most disastrous way. I hope this doesn't signal an end to my recent ride.

[RedBar]

January is usually a month where you should expect lower eCPM/RPM

Not for me and many other global producers, for many realworld manufacturers, now is when many corporate buyers are at their busiest. Yes, I know you qualified it with "season dependent" however I see too many posts with doom and gloom when around the corner it is precisely the opposite ... then again I am writing about realworld productivity as opposed to hopefully cyber clickers.

For me AdSense is almost gone however my realword business tells me a completely different reality.

[dolcevita]

I know from past that January is critical month. Especially the first half of January but dropping in CPC from 0.44 - 0.49 to 0.27 - 0.32 is more than i have expected.

I hope that very soon everything should be as it was in 2015.

[jbayabas]

"dropping in CPC from 0.44 - 0.49 to 0.27 - 0.32 is more than i have expected"

I just hope this is not the new average. Goog is killing us.

[netmeg]

My EPC has been very very low the past few days. RPM is just under $3.00, but that's a lot lower than this time last year. And yes, my visitors are mostly mobile.

January is typically a pretty low month for me (except for one site) but it looks so far like it's going to be significantly lower than last year. And traffic is up across the board close to 40% too.

[Ironside]

I have stopped trying to work out how AdSense works. I've had a pretty good week, someone above average earnings compared to what I have been getting in the last couple of months. However, yesterday seem to go back to normal again, today isn't much better, it's very slow indeed. The silly thing is, my rate has gone back to what it was a few weeks ago, I'm guessing over 1000 more hits each day and click rate as increased. We'll just have to wait and see

[radix]

RPM has been down here, too, for the past couple of days. It was expected to go down around Christmas, but should have bounced back with January starting. Didn't happen so, RPM down at Christmas levels, down to about 75% of the preceding 28 days avg. Traffic is rather good and stabile.

[vegasrick]

@redbar, there is 100% a mobile adsense algorithm. I've watched the changes very closely. The minute our site was deemed "mobile friendly" by Google, the revenue plummeted by morning. When we removed mobile view, the revenue soared back up once the site lost the "mobile friendly" label in search.

At the moment we were forced to remove the mobile view and just waiting out the hours before we are deemed non-mobile friendly again.

I wish we didn't have to but the mobile pay is horrendous. In a span of three days, our CPC went from 9 cents to 5 cents to 2 cents! It makes no damn sense. My CPC when a mobile user is clicking on a desktop ad is between 32-26 cents on average, but a mobile user clicks on mobile (even a 300x250) it's drops to 2 cents...... My rep keeps saying, 'just wait it out, things will pick up in a few weeks' - but when you do this for a living and have full time employees it's hard to wait out a full month for something to raise...possibly to 6 cents a click.

[avalon37]

Terrible start to 2016. Down 75% compared to the 1st 4 days of last year. Don't have a good feeling about things improving any time soon.

[jbayabas]

Pretty bad here. My all time worst day in 12 years. This hurts. I make a living from Adsense so this is hard for me to take. I don't understand what's going on. I'll just sleep this out as it is stressing me out. I hope this is just a bad dream and things will go back to normal when I wake up.

[edited by: jbayabas at 2:55 am (utc) on Jan 5, 2016]

[ember]

January is usually a month where you should expect lower eCPM/RPM because as stated, most advertisers have exhausted their budgets

That is always the case for me, and this January is no different. EPC is down as expected. Usually comes back in February.

[breeks]

Had a nice boost for the first three days but a big drop today as expected.
Kids back in school, adults back to work, webmasters complaining,
2016 here we come.

[magician]

On Monday, traffic is back to normal (in fact 10% upside from usual Mondays) but RPM is almost a dollar down than usual. I think things will be normal from Tuesday as more and more ad campaigns will go live again.

[avalon37]

The advertiser pool is now mostly just 2nd/3rd tier affiliate websites and advertisers you've never heard of. The quality advertisers are now over at Facebook. CPC prices are never returning to the levels we used to see on AdSense.

[jbayabas]

"The advertiser pool is now mostly just 2nd/3rd tier affiliate websites and advertisers you've never heard of."

Yup, I'm seeing these more today. Wtf.

[Mentat]

RPM/CPC is horrible, but for me, this trend started on 1st of December.
Something changed in December @ Google.
I cannot believe that so many advertisers dropped the payments in the busiest month of the year.

My CPC dropped from ~ 0.2 to 0.12$

[trebuchet]

December has traditionally been a boom month for me but the one just gone produced another significant decline. My December RPM in 2012 was close to double figures. It's since dropped by 75% (2013), 80% (2014) and another 75% (2015). So my December RPM has almost halved in just three years. That takes a big chunk out of my annual earnings because December is a high traffic month.

As I've said previously, I suspect Adsense is falling back into the pack and evolving into a CPM network. I'm sure there'll always be a few high value clicks for premium or niche advertisers. For the most part we seem to be competing for clicks worth pennies, not dollars.

[magician]

It's since dropped by 75% (2013), 80% (2014) and another 75% (2015). So my December RPM has almost halved in just three years.

I do not understand the math here. Do you mean 'dropped by' or 'dropped to'?

[nomis5]

eCPM/RPM is down to nearly half the level I would expect for January. That's a direct comparison to January last year so "seasonal" doesn't come into it for my figures. That's over three sites.

I've taken some Adsense ads off today and replaced them with affiliate ads to see if restricting the slots I have available for Adsense pushes up the price.

[srijayam]

For mine, Adsense is not still getting approved.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Earnings are down by over half compared to where they were at this time last year. So far today--even though it's early--my RPM is at .80 and dropping. Something has broken. The recent crappy average has been between $2 and $3. Last year it was at $5 to $6.

The frustrating thing is I work my ass off on my main website and the traffic is solid but Google isn't recognizing that. I hate to think I'm going to have to go back to a regular, full time job. Please, save me from that horror.

[RedBar]

@vegasrick

I've just checked my metrics for 2015 and the first four days of Jan and my EPCs over the longer term have been remarkably consistent across all three platforms:

Desktop 100%
Tablet 97.3% of desktop
Mobile 79.8% of desktop, it actually went up to 82.4% in December

Although what is notable is that for the first few months of 2015 tablet and mobile were steadily earning more and more each month as an overall percentage, however something changed in July, my earnings halved in a matter of a couple of weeks, and since then tablets and mobiles for the year remained pretty consistent at:

Desktop 61.4%
Tablet 19.2%
Mobile 19.4%

BUT the last three months I have seen another overall change:

Desktop 64.8%
Tablet 15.4%
Mobile 19.8%

And during December mobiles actually went up to 21.2%

I know the usage of my tablet has gone down as I use my phablet more. We'll see what January brings however the overall consistency of this last year may suggest it remaining the same, for me, bear in mind I am 100% B2B manufacturer but obviously carry all kinds of my widget trade ads.

[fearlessrick]

Happy New Year, webmasters - or, should I say, slaves to advertisers?

I just want to point out a few things which I hope will be of benefit to everyone. First, I have a fairly good-sized site and make OK money from Goog and two other ad services (Conversant and Bing/Yahoo). The first four days of January (and the last week of December) were terrible, especially on adsense. On some days, Conversant - which is CPM - earned more than goofly. So, Google is not your friend. I have not updated my site and won't convert to "mobile friendly" as I think it's just too much work and too much code.

So, what's a slave to do? Well, I have about seven or eight different income streams, so I don't depend on Google or just my website. I urge everyone to establish other means of income, and here's why:

This is the end. Anybody remember 2008-09? Back then - and you can check some of the posts around here - I warned people that the economy was going into the tank. It did. It's doing it again, and, what's worse, we never really recovered from the onslaught from 08-09. Businesses will be failing by the thousands, but Google and Amazon and Microsoft and banking interests and rich oligarchs will party on because they have stolen all the important assets and have captured governments. We, as independent businesspeople, have no friends. Advertisers want to pay less. Google wants to starve us. I've warned about this before. I used to be a newspaper publisher. I SET THE AD RATES. NOT THE ADVERTISERS and CERTAINLY NOT SOME AGENCY, WHICH IS ALL GOOGLE IS.

OK, lesson learned, but, it's hard to break bad habits, no? Anyhow, I wouldn't be too concerned about standards of living and such, since millions are going into poverty everyday, everywhere, thanks to the people of the world allowing government - elected and otherwise - to cater to big business and leave the scraps for the serfs (us).

We are very close to global depression and I am not alone in that thinking. Get ready to make major changes in how you live, how you view the world. Some advice: get off the grid as much as possible (share internet, heat with wood, grow your own food - and BTW, I do all of those things, and more). Forget what the government tells you. It's all lies. Think for yourself. Don't be afraid to make changes. Don't be afraid, period. It's fear that terrorists and governments alike use to control us. Break free. Think for yourself, but please, find new ways to make money, preferably in ways that the government can't tax your labor. We are close to currency collapse and we are at war already - ISIS and our own governments being the main adversaries.

I hope I have not ruffled too many feathers, but I hope I have ruffled enough to make a few people awaken. Sorry for rambling; this was completely off the cuff, but, from where I sit, things are not going to get better soon. Save yourself and your family/friends. (buy some silver or gold).

Good luck. I'll be around.

[Ironside]

I'm interested in using Interested in Conversant as well. How does it compare to AdSense and media.net? Also, I'm not sure what program I should choose from their website.

[SEOPTI]

It's game over for madsense.

[MrSavage]

I'm not saying it dead, but it's in decline (Captain obvious speaking). What I do believe is that for me, the bottom of the barrel advertisers and junk, non relevant ads have been ending up on my sites for a long enough period of time to say Google has better options for people (their own properties to advertise on). Thus I fill a role for them. The crud, I serve and I do so because the crud is still better than pennies offered elsewhere.

I enjoyed a nice ride for a number of days. Very encouraging, but I can say the last two took a nose dive in a familiar way. Like back to the street, punted from the penthouse suite.