January 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

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

[KaseyM]

RPM's beginning to rise towards the middle of the month - last few weeks would've been rubbish if it were not for some great traffic.

Still tracking at about the same as December money wise.

[jbayabas]

I'm just astonished at the horrendous quality of ads that's running on my sites. But what's interesting is my big competitor is running some really good quality adsense ads. Google probably has a new algorithm that detects if a site is high quality. If the bot detects it's not good quality, it will only show ads that is total garbage (very low rpm).

But i don't believe for a second that my site is bad quality, that is what frustrates me.

[Mentat]

I've just saw an "Increase your size" ad on my site! No joke ! :o

It was a deceptive ad for a Russian haircare!

This is the "bottom of the barrel"!

[avalon37]

Speaking of ads, I'd appreciate it if Google could flag/reject "old" ads. I am still seeing a significant portion of ads that are promoting "Black Friday" deals from 2015 and ads that have dates that are in the past.

[RedBar]

could flag/reject "old" ads

Plus ads that go through to 404 and blank pages.

[Ironside]

I object to Google using my website to advertise their own services, "your ads here" for instance. I'm quite sure that somebody browsing a fish keeping website is going to be interested in advertising on Google.

[RedBar]

A further EPC collapse for me today, even India's is down 50% ... my expected recovery this week simply is not happening, decisions, decisions.

[nubchai]

Weird. Is anyone else who did the Wordpress and Genesis framework upgrade last week noticing that Adsense ads are not displaying all the time? Thanks

[Whatagreatdayitis]

My ads have disappeared. WTF? I don't see a single ad on my 3500-page website. Is anyone else having this problem?

[frankleeceo]

I am seeing the issue with ad serving I thought it was temporary but it appears to be continuous. I started noticing the issue yesterday where I think about 20% of the ads fail to load. Or it could my RTB network having issue, I use RTB as first tier and fall to adsense as second filler, but the RTB tier looked fine.

I remember seeing Netmeg mentioning a couple days ago. Has someone figured out the reason?

[nubchai]

This is really weird. I replaced 3 responsive ads on my main site with 3 non responsive ads. The first displays but the other two don't. What's going on ? I did PM Netmeg but haven't heard back yet.

For those not seeing ads, are you using the plugin Quick Adsense to place your ads?

[frankleeceo]

@For those not seeing ads, are you using the plugin Quick Adsense to place your ads?

Yes

[Whatagreatdayitis]

I can't believe this. It looks like I'll have to go to media.net as a backup and rethink how and where I place adsense ads. The RPM has been crappy lately too despite good traffic from the U.S. and all over the world. Compared to last year, the CPC from small countries, in particular, has been terrible.

[nubchai]

I'm wondering if Quick Adsense might be the problem. It hasn't been updated and we had a Wordpress upgrade.

[azlinda]

My Google ads are not showing up and I don't use any CMS.

[nubchai]

Azlinda - cms would be Quick Adsense for example?

[kireb]

No ads on my site neither, just blank cavities. Whats going on?

[Londo]

Like many others my earnings have crashed thorough the floor, more than 50% down on this time last year. My Ad Review Center is just page after page of absolute garbage, seeing lots of foreign based junk ads from countries like India and Vietnam for some reason but even the US ones are terrible. I decided to block a few of these junk ads to see what would happen, few hours later checked my website on a browser with interest ads turned off and saw that there were almost no ads showing at all. So Google have given me the choice of showing a small number of garbage ads or nothing at all.

[azlinda]

@nubchai - My site is not WordPress. It's HTML5, CSS3. I don't use a content management system.

[nubchai]

O.k. I replaced my responsive Adsense ads with non responsive Adsense ads and they're displaying. This appears to be a problem in serving responsive ads. I've checked non responsive and they appear on desktop, tablet and smartphones. That may be a quick fix for others.If it works please let us know. Thanks.

[nubchai]

Thanks Linda.

[dba_guy]

No ads here either... across all of my sites which range from custom built, wordpress w/quick adsense, wordpress w/o quick adsense. I'm seeing 400 (bad requests) responses in Chrome Dev Tools when loading the page. Hoping this is just a bug and not a mass sweep of disabled accounts.

[krsaborio]

I checked my two websites (CMS driven) that are still running Adsense. Ads are still there.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

I just created a 160 x 600 skyscraper and put it into my site. Instead there's a 300 x 600 behemoth in its place. Creating new ads might be a temporary fix, but there's no telling what will show up when you put them into your website.

[Barrelroll]

This is ridiculous. No ads showing...What is going on?

[nubchai]

I've changed my ads on several sites to the old non responsive and they're displaying fine. I'm guessing this is a bug related to responsive ads. I have a test site running responsive ads and they're not displaying at all.

[Barrelroll]

No traffic either

[surnames]

google adsense at my site has stopped as of 2 hours ago. No ads, report has frozen to where it was 2 hours ago

[surnames]

also, the ads are not displaying at my site

[Barrelroll]

-

[edited by: Barrelroll at 12:24 am (utc) on Jan 13, 2016]

[surnames]

within 3 minutes of posting to this forum, the ads went back up again and reports are working.

[Barrelroll]

Ads are now showing but my views and earnings havn't changed in the last few hours...

[kireb]

Ads back on, this has cost me 3 hours of prime ad serving time!

[Whatagreatdayitis]

My ads are back, but I'm taking the loss out on Adwords spending. Take that, Google!

[frankleeceo]

Think adsense guys lurk these forums from time to time, or some that have better adsense relationship/support. Thank you whomever fixed the issue. Much appreciated. I see ads being served from my site that was having problems.

My guess there was a part of chain that broke and ads stopped serving to certain IP's, but it was a big range which caused a big impression drop.

[kireb]

What a coincidence today: first Google not serving any ads for hours and now more than 1 hour of 502 and 504 Gateway error notices at my Hostgator accounts. .

[SEOPTI]

Forget adnonsense, for God's sake please forget it. Learn how to do CPA, Amazon leads and affiliate marketing and you will never look back. Learn how to create your own products..

Adsense has been abandoned, they will probably completely kill off this nonsense in the next few years. Don't ride a dead horse.

Create your own unique product, write your outstanding sales copy and get rid off this nonsense third party critter called adsense. Serve the local community.

Adsense is for lazy people who are not mentally able to write a sales copy or create a unique product.
Goo$le profits from the laziness. Get real and remove this zombie from your websites.

Only people from India will be accepting adsense pennies.

Adsense is officially dead. Accept it and start something new, start being creative instead of trusting in pennies from their dying program. Adsense is dead.

[trebuchet]

EPC/RPM started to climb for me around the 8th. This lasted for two days, after which they've plummeted. This will be my worst opening fortnight in January for several years.

P.S. I was out all day today so didn't notice a problem with ads not displaying, however Adsense impressions are significantly down on previous weekdays.

[RedBar]

Needless to say my lowest-ever day Tuesday, honestly this is not even minimum payout level now, hero to zero, thousands to pennies, completely and utterly fubard for me.

And whilst I comprehend SEOPTI for me and my industry, probably several others too, there are no other options,

[Ironside]

SEOPTI finished ranting yet? :-) AdSense is not dead for everybody, I don't know why people like you keep saying it is. If you rely on AdSense for income then you are foolish. AdSense is extra money each month that is very welcome but if it finished tomorrow it wouldn't affect my daily life in the slightest. As for suggesting AdSense is for lazy people who are not mentally able to write sales copy, I think you are incredibly arrogant and rude.

As for Amazon affiliate marketing, I've tried it and it's a load of rubbish, the amount of money they pay for each sale is pitiful. EBay far outweighs Amazon when it comes to affiliate marketing.

The only thing you have said that I would probably agree with is that AdSense probably will die a death at some stage in the next few years. Yes, it's quite an easy way to make money, is not exactly rocket science copying and pasting some code onto a webpage. However, first of all you got to have a decent website with content if you want to be successful AdSense. That's not lazy by any stretch of the imagination, it takes a lot of time and commitment to create a website that brings in several hundred pounds a month.

[netmeg]

My ads came back shortly after I posted and I haven't seen a problem the past couple days. I use AdRotate to serve them, and it wasn't just AdSense, my other network ads (like Media.net and SOVRN) weren't showing either, so my problem at least wasn't with just AdSense.

Oh, and all my ads are responsive.

And SEOPTI, if you aren't happy with AdSense you don't need to run it. But this is the AdSense forum and you seem to be on a mission to convince everyone else to dump it. That's an opinion you're entitled to, but this is probably not the place.

[Alexandermichael]

Slight uptick today in an unusual way. Low cpc but high ctr

[trebuchet]

The hysterics and the Chicken Littles here really make me laugh. Adsense won't last forever - nothing ever does - and you should always have one eye on alternatives and revenue diversity. But if you have a busy site or two, there's still a decent amount of gold to be mined from it.

[EditorialGuy]

AdSense was down a bit for us yesterday (compared to the previous Tuesday), but not enough to make me wonder about ad serving. And in general, January has been strong for us--as it is every year at this time (in terms of traffic, AdSense revenue, and affiliate commissions).

As for affiliate income vs. AdSense income, it doesn't have to be "either/or." Our editorial site earns more from affiliate commissions than from AdSense, but AdSense revenue is a tasty layer of icing on the cake.

[TraitzZ]

... AdSense is doing better than ever, we publishers just don't experience that, it's not a dead horse, it just got a lot harder to compete and earn.
And eventually low quality publishers will be abondened by Google AdSense completely. But AdSense dying? No, they are getting started.

[krsaborio]

SEOPTI's post is quite provocative.

I'm based in San Jose, Costa Rica and I don't accept pennies to manage my Adsense account. That's why I removed Adsense ads from a site quite popular in its niche.

I'm happier today and I can live without those pennies!

[EditorialGuy]

Some sites work well with AdSense, and some don't--just as some sites work well with affiliate programs, and some don't.

If AdSense is a bad fit for your site, that doesn't mean AdSense is a bust for other publishers or that Google is evil. It just means you need to experiment and see what (if anything) works for you.

[krsaborio]

Some sites work well with AdSense ...

I agree as I once run Adsense on a RE website and I was quite happy about it.

Now that my Adsense account is quite optimized to get rid of unwanted ads, I expect to test Adsense on that site again. I assume I'll get paid at least quarters instead of pennies then.

It's a shame good and trustworthy ad publishers didn't get to display their ads on the other site.

Incidentally, where did the 'Google is evil' come from?

[filbiz]

The only thing you have said that I would probably agree with is that AdSense probably will die a death at some stage in the next few years.

I read this kind of sentence many times since I joined adsense. I'm already ten years in adsense but adsense is still there. I've spend more years in adsense than working in my previous employment. My sister-in-law lost her job last year and she is just 5 years on her job abroad. The point is, there is no security in everything. Even your precious job might be lost when your ass*ole boss kicks you out. I just remember when I was still employed. I thought the company I was working with is struggling because they always have job cuts and retrenchments. I'm always afraid that time that the company might close down. The management always said that the company needs to slim down to cut cost. I also lost my job that time. But you know what? that company just moved to a better and bigger location for expansion in 2013.

[Ebuzz]

Adsense is still alive but it looks like Google is not caring too much about it now, and also how to address mobile traffic on traditional websites. Most likely, they have given up on it, although they (we) still collect the increasingly decreasing pennies coming in.

They are more focused on YouTube and Android (mobile ads) because they feel this is the future.

[netmeg]

I'm having ad serving issues again; I put some blank HTML pages in as the backup (with analytics on the so I could track them) and I'm seeing pageviews for the the blanks. Once I get enough in a log file, Imma send it in to AdSense and ask WTF.

[nubchai]

Netmeg please let us know what they say. My pageviews were slightly down yesterday with the same number of clicks as the previous day. RPM was up as were earnings. But still much lower than usual. We've had a variety of people test access to our main site and whether the ads were visible and they are. Not sure what's going on :(

[ember]

Adsense is for lazy people who are not mentally able to write a sales copy or create a unique product.

This only comes from someone who does not know how to make Adsense work. I do quite well with it. Somehow my feeble, lazy little brain has managed to figure it out.

[nubchai]

And now I have a red bar :(

[RedBar]

RedBar has a red bar and RedBar has had that red bar for hours now ... it'll not make any difference to my earnings once the red bar disappears!

[Ironside]

I've also got the red bar, but my earnings don't seem to be affected at the moment

[RedBar]

Earnings? What is this strange word called earnings?

I have no clue as to what it may mean!

[Mentat]

No "red bar" here and I wish I had one...

CPC @ peanuts level since 1st of January.

[Ironside]

Because nobody really talks about what they earn from AdSense I really don't know what is considered to be a good day from other members. However, £10 a day is pretty good for me. That's probably absolutely nothing compared to what other people make, but I'm happy with it.

To be honest, I don't know why AdSense don't let people talk about what they earn, it seems rather petty to me. It's not as if your employer at work forbids you to disclose your earnings. What we earn is our business, I don't see why we should be told not to tell other people.

[netmeg]

It's not a very good idea, if for no other reason than it might encourage people to try to invade your niche (or miscreants to break into your empire) Some of my sites are public knowledge, and some aren't. I wouldn't disclose earnings specifics even if it were allowed.

[avalon37]

Straight from the Terms and Conditions...

"you may accurately disclose the amount of Google’s gross payments resulting from your use of the Services."

You cannot legally be banned from telling others how much you make. That said, it is foolish and I believe if you caught attention somehow...Google would ban you in a second even though it technically allowed. But is allowed.

I've been to numerous Premium Publishers events at Google's NYC offices where subject of earnings were openly discussed among other publishers with AdSense product managers present. In fact, based on discussions about earnings and pageviews they would recommend different tools and services like DFP and waiving costs/fees, etc.

[frankleeceo]

You probably do not want to disclose your earnings if you earn over a certain amount. Competition comes in mind.

You can always kinda tell a good day from your own personal relative earning history.

For example...holiday was great for me and now it sucks since it's about 60% of the holiday high.

As far as weather goes, Rpm turned sour for me again hitting this months lows

[kireb]

I also have a relatively low RPM since January 1st, as was the same as last year in the first weeks of January.
Things will go up again (fingers crossed).

[ember]

It's never a good idea to talk about how much money you are earning, whether as an employee or as a business owner. It invites all sorts of trouble.

[RedBar]

Yay, that good old red bar did it for me yesterday producing new record lows all round but for one.

Belgium was my highest earning country!

Zero earnings from UK, India, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, awesome.

Your earnings will not be affected by the red bar, what a load of crock, AdSense is broken, they know it yet either can't or won't do a darned thing about it.

[supergml]

I've been noticing an outage (didn't see any red bar) since day before yesterday. The income and page views are not moving, I have statcounter script to verify and always the numbers of page views between Statcounter and Google Adsense page views are quiet similar, Once the page views and clicks and revenue start moving, it drops back to the first number later. Yesterday was totally disastrous. From XX.XX to less than 2 bucks. !
I've tried to find an answer on the Google support forum, I could not find even a question about this issue. Who programmed that forum?

[supergml]

Another thing that I just noticed is that yesterday my Active View Viewable on Google Adsense stats that's usually around 50% was "-" that's even not a zero !
Of course that the websites are working ok as the traffic on them is checked also by Statcounter.

[nubchai]

Something happened on Tuesday. It was then that clicks, rpm and revenue declined dramatically. Page views declined a bit. The main website is accessible, we have a flow of people we can see through analytics. It's like clicks are either being taken back (which I haven't seen), ads are maybe not being displayed to all visitors, or clicks are not being recorded.

Because there are not other threads discussing this, I'm assuming it affects only a small number of people.

[supergml]

nubchai.
I'm in a XX.XX daily average, I see that my websites in the last 2 days shows USD 1.xx, once it starts to move up it goes back to USD 1.XX and also the numbers of page views drop back. It started day before yesterday late afternoon US Pacific Time when the numbers got frozen.
I emailed Adsense Support. now I'm waiting for a response, In the meantime I don't have anymore nails to bite. :)

[Ironside]

Today is very slow