January 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

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

[rveram]

As per google request I made my site responsive / mobile compatible and my CPC dropped from $0.09 to $0.03. Although I'm having 60% more clicks my earnings decreased in about 30%.

I hope to recover on the third week of January.

[CommandDork]

Seems to be a common trait among publishers today - increased clicks, decreased earnings and with no solution in sight for our part. At the mercy of what advertisers are willing to pay now that they've gotten use to online marketing trends. I'm at 2011 levels myself (earnings-wise).

Hope 2012-2013 doesn't turn out to be just a fond memory one day - that's when Adsense peaked for me. I've been looking for the "recovery" since but a third straight down year will be a pattern and a sad sign of things to come.

[Ironside]

Not really sure what's happening today, it's hardly got off the mark. It was going quite well at one stage, then nine clicks and several £s were taken off me, that's not happening for a long time.

[jbayabas]

"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."

I fear this the most but it's the TRUTH. I feel so helpless.

[Vader1206]

Wishing for the red bar today. Can't believe how low my revenue is right now. Normally I'd be hitting this amount around 6am; NOT 6PM.

[MrSavage]

Adsense for me has hit the skids the past few days. I'm not shocked, but hopefully this is temporary and that some of my maturing assets that were cashing out over the past couple of weeks can bounce back. If this does continue, I will likely not be checking on a daily basis. If I'm encouraged, I'll check in.

[magician]

Low RPM continue to reign on Wednesday as well :(
C'mon google.

[Mentat]

I just want to sleep for a month...

[began]

Did u get message today that u have blocked some ads wich can increase ur earnings by 55%?

[RedBar]

Not good, the past couple of days for me has seen CTR down 40% therefore click volume down and together with an EPC at the bottom of my normal range, it's looking horrible.

[Ironside]

I feel everyone's pain, two years ago I was easily doing £600 (approximately) each month. This month I will be thankful if I do half of that.

[EditorialGuy]

How often does everyone spend an hour or two in the ad review center? Do you find it benefits you much?

I don't spend any time at all in the ad-review center. I regard AdSense as a "set and forget" solution: I provide the space, and Google supplies the ads for the categories that I allow.

As for us - everything is down by half compared to December. Adsense is much less affected compared to some of the networks. This is to be expected in the first two weeks of the year. In these quieter times we focus on long term content rather than news etc.

It really depends on your topic. For our topic, this is the time of year when things start hopping in terms of both AdSense and affiliate revenue. (Our quietest time of year is from about mid-November to late December.)

[Ironside]

Surely you would have to have a very special website before somebody is going to pay good money to have their adverts showing? I don't know if there's any way to find out if you have got people who are targeting your website specifically for adverts? I reckon I earn between 30p & 60p per click my larger ad units. Occasionally I will get some clicks that and twice, three times or sometimes more. But I'm certainly not going to spend ages in the ad revenue centre because I don't think you would gain anything by doing. I prefer to spend my time optimising the website so I can get as many businesses, as possible.

[RedBar]

Does anyone else feel we should be having a red bar?

AdSense v my metrics today make absolutely no sense, AdSense looks way behind or G has data loss going on ... my highest earning country so far today after 10 hours or so is India, that has never happened before at this point of the day.

[netmeg]

I'm actually good today.

[trebuchet]

My RPM in the first week of January is less than half December's RPM. Looking on the bright side, in previous years EPC/RPM has started to climb from around January 8th. Well that's my pipe dream and I'm sticking to it.

I don't bother with the ad review centre. It doesn't provide you with useful information and the time spent there tends to be counterproductive. Like our wheelchaired detective friend, I prefer to use my time building content rather than chasing junk ads and/or my tail.

[Ebuzz]

My RPM in the first week of January is less than half December's RPM. Looking on the bright side, in previous years EPC/RPM has started to climb from around January 8th. Well that's my pipe dream and I'm sticking to it.

A lot hinges on the economic situation, which resumed its downward slide this week. As one person above said, the end looks near for the economy.

I hope no one overspent on Christmas shopping.....

[RedBar]

I hope no one overspent on Christmas shopping.....

UK - The amount of money being borrowed by consumers in the run-up to Christmas rose by £1.5bn, the largest rise for nearly eight years.

That's USD 2.2+bn and just for November, what will December reveal?

[bbc.co.uk...]

[RedBar]

The click volume was back to normal for me yesterday however my EPC was dire, both the UK AND India outearned the USA where my EPC was 39.4% of this last month's average and 54.3% of January so far ... Horrible, horrible, horrible!

[Ironside]

Like everybody else, earnings have dramatically dropped in the last two years. However, I have to respectfully disagree with some individuals who are suggesting that AdSense is dead because it obviously isn't or we would all be in the same boat. Maybe it's a good idea to completely revamp your website layout and change the position of the ads completely? I've decided to redesign my website and make it look more like a magazine layout. So rather than just having paragraphs of text, I'm going to try and may be put a couple of blocks of text together, scattered photos throughout with AdSense units included within. I've tried AdSense units in the right-hand column I just don't get much interest in them. The majority of my earnings come from a single link unit, and AdSense units within the text. If I go onto a website I don't take any notice of the right-hand column, however I'm much more likely to click on an ad if it's within the text I am reading.

[netmeg]

Right now I'm chasing down something or other that is causing ads not to load. I don't think it's AdSense because I'm seeing it for all my ad networks. We haven't done any changes on our end (working on a new site layout) but there was a WordPress and a Genesis update this week, and I'm trying to figure out if one of those caused it. If you use either of those technologies you might want to spot check your ads to see if you're seeing any issues.

[breeks]

Use WordPress and Genesis on my main site and ads are loading fine. Almost instant, at least to the dwindling supply of visitors that do not have an ad blocker.

[RedBar]

So far today my US CTR is almost zero, diabolical, WTF gives?

[magician]

Friday has been a little better than rest of the week but RPM is still lower (around 20%) than my usual.

[RedBar]

If yesterday is any indication of my future AdSense earnings then I'm at the end of the tracks.

PVs - Highest this month
Clicks - Just over my average
RPM - Lowest this month
Earnings - Second-lowest this month
EPC - Lowest this month

If previous years are anything to go by then next week, traditionally, ought to see a recovery however I very, very much doubt it, when I do not get any earnings from my own country, well, it's game over.

[C0DeZeR0]

Earnings drop by 50% .. :(

[deuces]

I don't know what's happening with you guys but this month is leading to be one of the best months in years for us.

[filbiz]

@deuces lucky for you that you have the best months in years. What is your niche?

[filbiz]

I'm also experiencing a very low earning/very low CPC compared to my previous years. I also notice a significant drop of CPC in mobile device traffic compared to desktop.

[Mentat]

All dead! Traffic is good, but payment is nightmare!

Silence is upon us!

[RedBar]

PVs normal
CTR ok
USA EPC smashed to bits
Earnings less than Xmas Day!

[netmeg]

lucky for you that you have the best months in years. What is your niche?

We don't disclose that here except in the most general of terms.

In other news, I had a nice big round of ad-clicking bots yesterday from Amazon, XLHost and a few other hosts. So there's that. In case anyone cares, these are the IP ranges I blocked for hitting thousands of pages; not all of them generated clicks, but it was way unusual behavior for this time of year. The 54.* ones are all Amazon, of course.

# 2016 Bots
deny from 54.161
deny from 54.163
deny from 54.159
deny from 54.157
deny from 206.222
deny from 64.79.94
deny from 173.244.168
deny from 68.233.247
deny from 199.193.115
deny from 162.216.5
deny from 81.94.192

[breeks]

More mobile traffic = lower Adsense earnings
This morning, I'm at 90% mobile 10% tablet
About the only time, people still use a desktop computer is at work.
Old Folks may still boot up the PC to surf the web :)

[Ironside]

Really slow today. 17 clicks so far, haven't even reached £1. It seems that individual clicks are paying very little today. Hopefully it will take off a little better this afternoon when people are open about more.

[nikkoboy]

One interesting piece of article published recently on TechCrunch : "The $8.2 Billion Adtech Fraud Problem That Everyone Is Ignoring"

[techcrunch.com...]

[EditorialGuy]

About the only time, people still use a desktop computer is at work.
Old Folks may still boot up the PC to surf the web :)

We still get most of our traffic and the vast majority of our revenue from desktop, laptop, and tablet users. And, if we're to believe Quantcast, those users aren't just old folks.

I suspect that my Millennial son is typical of the users who are generating significant affiliate revenues (and decent AdSense revenues) for our editorial site: He spends a lot of time on his smartphone, but when he's ready to buy or book, he goes to his laptop.

[Ironside]

The more people use the Internet, the more advertising there is going to be. However, nobody likes advertising at the best of times, which is obviously a downside when you want to make money from advertising. The people who make these mobile apps couldn't give two hoots about people like us, they want to make money from creating apps that block advertising. It's a crying shame really because AdSense doesn't really inhibit a person's enjoyment when they are browsing a website. Okay, there are some exceptions, but if you put your ads in the right place the person can still read the content without having the adverts get in the way. But you only have to look at YouTube, how long will it be before every video has an advert before it that you have to sit through? And since Google own YouTube, they can do what the hell they like.

[wa desert rat]

It's true that our ads are far less obtrusive to a users browsing experience than a lot of what's out there. But it's the stuff that is out there that is obtrusive that is making users block all ads more and more. Heck... even *I* block ads now; but at least I do it in a way that lets me allow some sites to post ads.

Because my ads are pretty much linked to the user's interests a lot of my users would really like the ads. Unfortunately, due to Google's rules, I cannot tell them that.

This needs to change.

[avalon37]

If only we were publishers for Facebook where the ads are way more contextually relevant. Where the ads actually look interesting and are visual; maximum of 20% text in ads Facebook ads. Where users can actually leave comments on paid ads. Oh yeah and where the advertisers are companies people have heard of or likely will in the future. Absolutely 0 affiliate and fat belly ads at Facebook.

Google only cares about YouTube for its display income at this point. People love YouTube. And why shouldn't they? It's mostly copyright infringed upon material that Google turns a blind eye to. So Google gets free copyright protected content and earns billions by ramming ads down peoples throats. Or you can pay $10 not to see the ads.

[Ironside]

There are not many websites that I visit that do not display my own browsing history. I also see one hell of a lot of Google's own ads on lots of other websites. My particular niche doesn't really display relative ads here in the UK. However in the US there are obviously a lot more businesses related to my niche and therefore a lot of ads that do appear on pages are displaying relative ads to my users in those countries. What I do sometimes is ask a couple of friends in the US and Canada to browse my website and tell me what they are seeing. I would say that 90% of my visitors come from the US, as does most of my earnings. So it's interesting to know what ads are shown to US/North American visitors

[EditorialGuy]

Google only cares about YouTube for its display income at this point.

About 71 percent of the AdSense ads on our site over the past seven days have been display ads, and those ads have been earning higher "impression RPM" than our text ads. YMMV.

[Ironside]

I've given up bothering about ads now. We are given the choice to display ads, or text and display ads, if you want display ads only, you start getting pestered by Google asking you to change back again. I've done so much testing, I think I found the best position and the best size ads for the time being. Earnings are nowhere near as good as they were two years ago, but I'm still doing three figures each month so it's not all doom and gloom.

[avalon37]

Ironside gets it.

[Bobb11]

Today very low CPC but CTR is little bit lower then ussual but CPC is very low 50% down today. Do you think some firms still dont have budget for this year / month and better will be from half of January? Or this bad will be forever?

[breeks]

My Millennial son and all of his friends use adblocker. Spend most of their online time on mobile phones, and only use a desktop to play games or while at work.

[jbayabas]

Really dire here. I don't know what happened to adsense. It's total collapse. Looks like this is going to be forever.

[Ironside]

A question for those of you who are finding things really dire at the moment, what size, where and how many ad units have you got on your pages? I am more convinced now that mobile phone use is responsible for downfall earnings. Two or three years ago 336 x 280 ad unit placed at the very bottom of my article would bring in shed loads of money. I don't even have an AdSense unit at the end of my contract now, I've replaced it with a 600 x 250 media.net unit which does very very well indeed.

What I've done now is put two units in the left-hand column above a menu. First of all I have my 90 x 200 link unit which does very well. Directly underneath that I have a responsive which renders really well on mobile phones and looks good. If you are looking at the website the desktop, it normally displays as a 160 x 600 skyscraper, on a mobile phone into small rectangle. I have now gone over to 300 x 600 ad units which are located within my text, more than often above the fold embedded in text. These are doing quite well as well. I found that all of these units, even the non-responsive units show really well on the most popular phones. People are moving away from small mobile phones so I don't think there's too much to worry about regarding units being too big for the viewing area. Having said that, I've now come to realise that a non-responsive large ad unit which comes up before the first body of content may not be the best idea. Therefore my large 300 x 600 ad units placed at the top of the page are actually floated to the right which means they don't come up first. The only ad units that appear at the top of the page on a mobile other smaller ad units, which means you get a nice little compact AdSense unit, but you haven't got to scroll 4 miles to reach the content.

I know a lot of you guys like analysing all the figures like rpm etc, but I don't think that really benefits you when it comes to making more money. I found that the best way is to try units in different places, if after a month a unit has and you enough money to make it worthwhile then move it.

[RedBar]

Every time it rains
It rains pennies from heaven
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven

And Google has determined that's all you're going to get!

[frankleeceo]

RPM is a metric used to determine the effectiveness of your "relative" improvements that associate more or less with ads serving and bidding environment, generic ads placements and overall effectiveness. In other words, you look at your RPM before and after change within your own website. And you can also generally compare RPM with other niche to determine the strength of ads between niches.

I think most of us that having bad rpm is generally related to ad serving weather and timing at the moment. The weather is becoming warmer and RPM as of today is about 10~20% higher than this month's low (still 60% lower from the holiday high).

With your case, ad blindedness may be to blame, media net's ad does look different than the widely pushed adsense, and at the end of your articles it look like a menu to the rest of other articles. Use it by all means to get more $, I would with your niche. You could probably make more if you promote specific products within your articles with affiliates, I think your readers can benefit from those recommendations too. You do operate in a niche with pretty strong buying intent. People probably will do anything to make their life easier while keeping their fish alive.

The small mobile ad performs extremely poorly at my niche, entertainment related stuff. Ad blindness and non buying intent basically puts the ad space above the fold at like 0.01~0.05 rpm for US traffic. I stopped bothering with it at all after a few tests here and there. I am evolving towards focusing on creative ways to shove more big ads while still serving my users well.

Simple monetary figure comparison isn't good because of the PV fluctuations with traffic.

If you are simply testing for ad placement, CTR % is probably a better metric.

[Ironside]

@Frank thanks, some very interesting points that I have taken on board. Actually, I have an affiliate account with eBay which does bring in some money. It's difficult to say exactly what products are selling the best because you are given that specific information, but I think it's definitely good related to fish keeping that probably make the most money. Earnings can vary with my eBay affiliate account, some months I don't get anything, other months it could be £50. I have been experimenting with small rectangular picture units which I have embedded within relating content. I've also used simple links as well which are probably more likely to get people clicking.

Thankfully for me most of my visitors are from the US, even though I were UK-based website. But I decided to go with.com domain which I think was probably the best move. I think if I'd stuck.co.uk website wouldn't have done anywhere near as well. The problem with the UK is there just aren't enough people in the hobby to make good money compared to the US. So when it comes to eBay affiliate for instance, I have to choose the US when using banners for instance, basically that means everything is shown in dollars. It's a working project which I am still trying to get to grips with. My hit rate did suffer for some strange reason, but that has crept up to over 3000 hits a day again which is why think earnings have increased slightly with AdSense. That's crap top

[fearlessrick]

I said I'd be around, so, here it is Monday, January 11, and adsense is pretty much sucking air (that's about as nicely as I can put it).

So, is it adsense, or, is it everything? Well, US stock markets just had their worst month to start a year EVER, opening the conversation to the cause for adsense earnings being far, far down, is not adsense, or google, but the entire economy. Not only did US markets have a horrible week to start the new year, but most other major world markets are not doing well either.

As I've claimed in the past to be something of a junior economist (no formal training, just lots of hands-on experience in business), the global economy has not looked well for a long time. The economies of the US, Europe, China and Japan have been held up by massive money printing by central banks. That era seems to be at an end.

If you are heavily in debt or leveraged, you may have issues going forward, but DO NOT PANIC. There will be millions in much the same boat. People are being crushed by a combination of low wages, high rents, high utility bills and fees and onerous TAXES. Be thankful, if you have an online business, that you are not burdened by the crushing regulations which are killing small business in the US.

It's not all gloom and doom, however, if you can ride out the coming economic and social firestorm. On the other side will be a world with less regulation, lower prices, bargains galore. It helps to be very self-reliant and independent and to have some savings in precious metals, cash and useful machinery, tools, and vehicles. Start a garden come spring. That's a must, even if you can only grow a few plants on a terrace. Every little bit will help.

Cut your expenses as much as possible. I would expect many people to cut cable TV service and mobile phone usage, so going mobile may not be the panacea as Google has presented it. Also, Facebook is a joke, a farce, useless, except to wish old friends you haven't seen in years a happy birthday. Otherwise, it's a total time-waster.

Twitter is somewhat more useful for business, to promote new pages, etc. For now, that's all I have to offer. As an old mentor told me many years ago, "Plan your work. Work your plan." Persistence and an insistence to never allow failure will carry the day, the week, the year. Good luck to all.

[netmeg]

I don't think that Google has a good handle on mobile ad delivery or click fraud, so while my earnings haven't fallen too much, I'm stepping up my search and evaluation of other monetization models. I sure don't want to rely on it or even assume it's going to be the major chunk of my portfolio in two years.

Think about it. How many times, after a ginormous traffic or revenue drop, has Google bounced back bigtime with rainbows and unicorns? It's kind of like winning the Powerball. Someone's gotta do it eventually, but the chances could be one in 300 million.

[martinibuster]

Let's please stay on topic. The narrow topic is January 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations.

Posts that are completely off topic may be subject to removal (by popular demand of members).

Thanks. ;)

mb

[edited by: martinibuster at 7:45 pm (utc) on Jan 11, 2016]

[Ironside]

Earning money from Google AdSense is rather like being the manager of a football team. When it's going well it can be very lucrative, however it can all come to an end very abruptly without any warning.

[avalon37]

If you've been affected, it's unlikely things will get better (your earnings) unless you can drive a ton more traffic. Because CTR and CPC is down for many people for 2 reasons (that I know I've posted many times recently).

Quality advertisers have shifted to YouTube and Facebook. Big brands are, fewer and fewer, appearing on smaller publisher sites like the majority of us here. If you are B2B you are probably faring better than publishers in competitive consumer goods verticals.

This is the reason people. It's not something more complicated or likely to be "fixed".

[Ironside]

There was lots more money to go around a few years ago, now everybody wants to get on the bandwagon. Because there's more websites the amount of money you earn from each click is obviously going to be a lot less. I don't necessarily believe that having a unique niche is the key, unless of course you are a top blogger recommending diamond engagement rings :-). I've always said that driving as much traffic to your website is the best way to earn money.

[EditorialGuy]

I don't necessarily believe that having a unique niche is the key, unless of course you are a top blogger recommending diamond engagement rings :-). I've always said that driving as much traffic to your website is the best way to earn money.

Ideally, you have the right topic, the right readers (e.g., people who are researching purchases), and a decent amount of traffic.That's been my experience over the years with both advertising and affiliate commissions.

[TraitzZ]

So my dear webmasters, I've been following your discussions for months now without telling my point of view.

Some of you speculate that advertisers have moved to YouTube in the past two years, which left you with less money and more for the big guys there.
And eh, that's not true. I am one of these big guy YouTubers, having tons of traffic (80.000 - 100.000 daily pageviews, increasing steadily) and experience the same you did and still do since 2012: Average AdSense earnings are 2.5 times lower than they were three years ago. And unfortunately that's a pattern that continues, it is getting worse every year. RPM is decreasing while traffic is growing, at least that's what kept me in the game for this long.
By the way: Most of my traffic is from desktop users, just 25% mobile and 20% tablet.
And I don't know about the type of guys that are crying over RPM of around 2£; I did not have a single month with such high numbers for the last 18 months.
And January is always abysmal, we know that. But let's get this clear. Next year will be worse than now. Prepare to have a product to sell that people will actually value to buy... Because otherwise it's going to be tough times.

As I see it, advertisers are either too stupid (still on TV, on Facebook - like srsly the worst place to advertise, such an hypocrite company) or too many people are trying to make their living with ads - growth from advertisers can't keep up with the growth of publishers.

[krsaborio]

I've been running Adsense in 3 sites I own.

One of the sites serves copyrighted content from the major record labels through key content providers. Hence, I had to check constantly on the ads being served on this site for publishers running phony sites.

Well, I got tired and nuke Adsense from this site. Pennies do not pay for the time it takes to ensure only quality Adsense ads are served on a site.

[krsaborio]

A bit more information ...

I did block the following in my Adsense control panel: All sensitive categories; 40 general categories; 120 specific URLs.

Yet, unwanted ads still got in.

On the site I nuked Adsense completely, I´m still testing ads from another major player in the business, Amazon.

[supercyberbob]

Holy deadsense Batman.

What's going on with this Groogle gong show.

[Alexandermichael]

I'm always lurking here to see if everyone else is in the same boat or just me etc. I'm a YouTube I get about 10k daily pageviews nothing huge unfortunately only recently has my traffic started to pick up although I've been running AdSense on my channel since 2012. My content is likely regarded by youtube/AdSense as high quality because I normally get paid a high rpm but it'd been decreasing like everyone else. In 2012 even though my pageviews were crap I was getting $8-10 rpm now at best like last month on December I averaged $4. This month has been a complete disaster so far it started off under $1 rpm for me and it seems to be slowly creeping back to a normal low of $2-3 I'm at $1.50 right now ugh so frustrating though makes you not even want to create content anymore.

[ember]

Quality advertisers have shifted to YouTube and Facebook.

Still disagree.

[krsaborio]

Incidentally, I still plan to run Adsense on the other 2 sites. I hope I won't have to spend so much time taking a look at the Ad review center. I'll let you know how it goes in about a week.

[SEOPTI]

<deleted>

[magician]

Monday was bad, real bad. RPM continues to be much lower than expected even on a Monday - almost lower by 35%. I think it's a new normal for 2016.

[Mentat]

Yep, it's like the first week of 2016 were the last $.
No new campaigns...

The ads are rubbish (a lot of "increase your size"/"Get fit now" kind of ads).

[Ironside]

While I can't complain at the moment, January is looking like it's going to be a pretty good month. Page rpm yesterday was £2.86 and impression rpm was 82p, along with 73 clicks it wasn't a bad day.

Mind you, I was getting a little bit worried in December that may be one of these Panda updates had affected my website because my hit rate dropped by about 1000 each day. However, it seems to have recovered now, in fact I had something like 4170 hits on the website on Sunday, I think that is either equalling, or just below my all-time best for a single day.

Like I've said on more than one occasion, I don't think I will ever go back to what it was like two years ago, but I am more than happy with earnings at the moment, certainly not declining with me.

[RedBar]

After 12 years it's nearly the end of my AdSense journey, January 2016 v 2015 earnings so far are 55.8%, it's almost at the point that it can't be sliced any thinner.

I know I've said the above before however this time, unless it picks up seriously, it will be pointless continuing with AdSense and in my industry there ia no alternative ad platform and as for affilates, bah!

[netmeg]

Still disagree.

Me too, but arguing over it is more trouble than it's worth.