January 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

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

[nubchai]

Supergml

I totally understand. I just don't see any other threads discussing this which makes me think it's not a widespread failure.

Would appreciate it if you share any adsense support reply that you get.

Thanks,
Nub

[RedBar]

Red bar again for me!

Now there's a surprise with 3 clicks and 66 cents in earnings, utterly fubard.

[nubchai]

RedBar you're not alone. Just checked and I have the red bar too.

[Calum_Jones]

I'm experiencing a dramatic drop in CPC. However, I have seen my CTR go unnaturally high on two ad units for no reason at all. I think there might be some sort of attack happening. Might just be an attack on my website not sure.

It's only mobile and tablet traffic.

[Ironside]

Yes, I've got the red bar as well. Earnings have just started to move, at least we are above £1 anyway. I never really worry about it at this time of the day because most of my earnings come from the US and its still quite early there. Mind you, three years ago I could switch my computer on at 11 o'clock (UK time) and I would already have £15 in earnings, where have those days gone?

[supergml]

I had the red bar too for a while, stats were climbing up just a little, I just checked, the red bar is gone and they erased the earnings and page views and now I'm back to less than a buck. What the heck is going on? !

[krsaborio]

Please let me ask a question.

Where do you see the 'red bar'?

Thanks.

[Ironside]

Above the yellow bar, if you have the red bar then you will notice it, believe me.

[krsaborio]

Thank you for the reply.

Where should I look for a yellow or red bar? Under 'Performance reports'?

[Ironside]

When you go to view dashboard > view report > you will see the yellow bar. However, if I remember rightly you will only see the red bar if you look at your report for that day.

Mind you, my red bar has now disappeared

[RedBar]

Red bar gone, metrics updated with an incredible 2 clicks, utterly taking the pi$$.

[nubchai]

Pretty dismal. Mt red bar is also gone and I've been given very few clicks. I also notice that the ads they're serving have little to noting to do with my niche, which is broad. I did see some speculation that this is the post-holiday impact and advertising budgets are low. I don't remember this happening last year though.

[SEOPTI]

Stop discussing them, they are done. If you don't see it now I'm sorry for you.

But of course if you love pennies go for it and discuss about xx% here and there in your journey of micro managing them. Adsense is for beginners/hobby sites/amateurs.

Micro-management will always kill your income. Start spreading your earnings.

Adsense is done, they really are DONE. It's game over.

Don't watch out for an excuse like "adervtisers spend less in January" this is frighting #*$! thinking beyond understanding. Just move on.

One last advice, create your own product.

Again my advice, stop micromanagement, spread your earnings, create your own product, there are thousands of affiliate programs and CPA programs out there, if you still rely on adsense you miss real cash. I know, waking up is hard.

[ember]

Adsense is done, they really are DONE. It's game over.

I receive surveys from Adsense all the time. They ask all kinds of questions and ask for feedback. Not sure why they'd keep doing that if they are so done. Seems to me that they want to improve the program.

If you don't like Adsense, then move on.

[MrSavage]

There has been mention of something broken with Adsense the last day or two? I need some explanation because i have traffic and my servers are not down. I'm not fretting just yet but holy smokes. I've never seen two days (bad) like this before.

[ember]

There seems to be some issues with ad serving.

[kireb]

Lowest RPM in years here. Far below the average.

[RedBar]

Friday's PVs highest of the month, needless to say with a red bar, second lowest CTR.

In fact January's CTR is 79.6% of December's,

January's EPC is 70.3% of December's.

Daily earning's 71.3% of December.

January 2016 earnings 45.1% of January 2015

For the past 12 years December has traditionally been my worst month ... game over for me ... I'm going to let it run until the end of the month to "maximise" what I can, it's plainly obvious that both Joe Public and my industry have walked away from this form of advertising.

As a factual note it is very interesting to know that all my industry's international/national trade fairs are busier than ever.

[msam]

Hi, I'm new here and I'm a bit worried about the decreasing of my Adsense earnings in January.
I'm just trying to learn more about Adsense and to make conclusions on how Adsense works in my niche, maybe any of you have similar experience on another market.
At first my ads benefit was marginal and I didn't care too much, but as the website grew in visits and earnings it was a great salary complement to my job.

I would like to know some opinions about that but first let me write some data:
- Website is an online application to create your own logo from template. There are thousands of logos in psd format to download too
- Website grown on the last year 2015 was spectacular, making me from about 500 - 1000 visits per day in January 2015 to 2500 - 3000 in November 2015
- Consequently earnings in Adsense grew from about $200 to $600 /month in that period
- Website in December 2014 and January 2015 decreased visits and earnings too but as there were not so many users compared to the end of 2015 I'm not sure if the data can be extrapolated to my current situation.
- Analitycs data : session time decreased a bit during 2015, from 3:50 (January 2015) to 3:31 (January 2016) , number of pages seen per session were stable during the year, bouncing rate was reduced spectaculary on october-november (from 45% to 11% ) and January 2016 is about 11% also.
- Adsense data : RPM of pages increased from $2,80 (January 2015) to $4,50 (November 2015) and now is about $2,20


Considering that no big changes were made on the ads position of website, do you think this is just the consecuences of post holidays season?
Given my website niche I think it's normal a decrease of earnings in December - January, but my concern about the decrease is the slow recovering in this month, what do you think ?

As I'm not an Adsense expert and I've never care too much about that until this year I would like to know how can be explained the earnings increase/decrease between specific dates with almost the same data. I know that it all depends on how much advertisers pay but it's strange to see so big differences between on day in April ( $16 with 323 clicks and 15.738 impressions) compared to another day in August ($20 with 280 clicks and 15.735 impressions). These are just two examples (I find many of these examples in my Adsense data), but I would like to know if this behaviour is just seasonal or may be more things to explain (again considering no changes on website and ads and no differences on Google's ranking).

I really appreciate your opinions
Thanks!

[Ironside]

The analysis is interesting, but it basically just tells you what's going on on a specific day, doesn't really give you any indication of how you can improve things. I've been doing AdSense for number of years now and two years ago I was probably doing £600 a month, that's over $1000. For the last year earnings have fluctuated to between £220, and £350, but I've not managed to get anywhere near the good old times. Have you checked to see how many people are hitting your website from a mobile device? I've always said that I believe this is one of the reasons why earnings have dropped dramatically. More people are now browsing the website from smartphones, a lot more than they were two years ago. Obviously a web page will display a lot differently on a small smartphone than they would on a large computer screen.

I can go for four or five days earning the same money each day, then all of a sudden earnings can drop to half of the previous few days. There isn't really any way that you can work out why this has happened. At the end of the day you are relying on your visitors to click on your ad units. Have you created custom channels for your units? I think it's a very good idea if you haven't because it gives you a good indication of exactly which AdSense units are giving you the best performance. You may find that one of your ad units doesn't bring anything in those better off moving it to a position that will end up with people clicking on it.

[Londo]

There seems to be something weird going on with the ads. If I view my website with interest ads enabled in the browser then ads seems to show as normal, although occasionally I get a popup message asking if I want to leave or stay on the page when I click on a link, never seen that before.

If I check my website with interest ads disabled in the browser then only the one 300x600 ad shows, the two other 300x250 ads generally don't show, I guess some might say that at this time of year there isn't enough relevant ads to fill the slots but again I've never seen this before.

My RPM was back to normal on Friday, don't know if this was just a blip, will have to wait until next week to find out as weekends are always quite for me.

[Ironside]

Afraid I can't really help. Just one thing however, are you still signed into your Google account when you are checking your website? If so, try signing out and then look again.

[Londo]

I've tried it both signed in and signed out but it's the same, virtually no 300x250 ad units showing any ads. I've tried changing the units but it makes no difference.

[Ironside]

Are you embedding the script straight into the page, or are you using any modules that automatically size the adverts to the space available? Sometimes I find that my 300 x 600 unit does display as a smaller rectangle, but I wouldn't say it stays like that. You should ask somebody else to look at the website for you and tell you what they see. Feel free to PM me with the URL if you want me to take a look and tell you what I can see over here in the UK.

[woody midrib]

Terrible month for my German sites so far. RPM is down another 25% from the second half of 2015 and down 55% compared to January 2014. In the last two years, I more than doubled my page views, but almost for nothing.

RPM on my US sites is fine (five times higher than for my German sites!). Unfortunately, I have very few US visitors.

[Londo]

Ironside - I think I found a solution, previously the 300x250 ad units were set to display only, I changed them to text/display and set the font to optimal, now about 80% of these ad units are being filled, previously it was around 5%. I'll keep an eye on it over the next few days to see how it goes.

[Ironside]

Doing quite well so far today. Impression rpm is at $6, page rpm is at $1.79. 30 clicks and already surpassed $10. Still many hours to go, looking like it could be a really good one

[MrSavage]

I seem to be seeing normal revenues today. Not often I can say it's them and not me, but in this case it appears to be true.

[Mentat]

Today is the bottom of the barrel for me :(
Incredible bad ads and terrible CPC!

The funny thing is that Google will probably report record earnings again!

Looking to 2016 from the financial news, we need to prepare for a big crash landing soon and as we all know, advertising and marketing budgets are cut first!

[nubchai]

I'm seeing minimal improvement. The Adsense ads are quite bad and have nothing to d with my niche. But the Media.net ads are quite good and relevant.

[deuces]

Just had one of the best days of the past 2 years! So excited, I had to share. Highest impressions, highest CTR, and highest CPC in a long time.

[scottb]

I don't like to get excited or discouraged about a single day, but I also had my best day yesterday in a long time after a bad start to the year.

It's weird how AdSense can be a pretty steady performer and then get volatile over a period of weeks or months, then settle back down to a pattern (at least for my sites).

[Ironside]

I too had a pretty blinding Saturday. Definitely the best earning day in several weeks. I can only assume that advertisers change the prices they pay for clicks on a daily basis. I can't think of any other reason why some days you can and good money, and then the next day it's absolutely rubbish.

[netmeg]

Seeing a lot more bot activity than usual this month, so expecting a bigger clawback at the end of the month than I usually get. Might not just be me.

[EditorialGuy]

I can't think of any other reason why some days you can and good money, and then the next day it's absolutely rubbish.

Small sample size? Remember, even if the same percentage of users click each day, the number of people who have clicked is going to be fairly small unless you've got enormous amounts of traffic.

It's the size of the monthly payment that matters.

[Ironside]

Exactly, I never bother with all the internal figures, just look at the £'s at the end of the month.

[Peanut45]

CTR and earnings have been terrible the past week or so, investigated a bit and noticed this:

[imgur.com ]

(Ad headlines obscured by the top-right icons)

Not sure how long it's been like this, I've seen it before certainly, but this looks especially bad now if you have 180x150 small rectangle units, or even larger ones with similar proportions.

Have reported it so hopefully they might do something about it.

[Mentat]

Monday is non-working day in US (Martin Luther King day).

For me is a disaster this weekend. Saturday has an even lower eCPM/CPC.

[dethfire]

Yeah today is looking like a record low. 70% down.

[Ironside]

I would have thought that if people were not working then they will be at home using the computer more.

How many people use custom channels? I am weeding out any AdSense units that don't really do much. If you look on the Internet you will find loads of different websites that have those heat maps. They basically show you where Google suggest putting your ads. I don't know about anyone else, but most of that advice totally contradicts what works for me.

[ember]

Seeing a lot more bot activity than usual this month, so expecting a bigger clawback at the end of the month than I usually get.

Adsense has told me that bot activity gets especially bad in the Spring (and I can attest to that), but maybe it's starting early this year. Fun, fun.

[EditorialGuy]

Monday is non-working day in US (Martin Luther King day).

Most people in the private sector don't get the day off, unless they work for banks.

[ember]

Or schools, libraries, government offices, etc.

[magician]

Very high bot activity on one of my websites. This website is almost dead but adsense reporting pageviews in several tens of thousand for Sunday. Analytics not reporting this traffic. No clicks and revenue though.

[Mentat]

Normal ad request, normal CTR, the lowest payment in my Adsense history Sunday and Monday continue the trend.

[RedBar]

For me both Saturday and Sunday had normal PVs and my new lower January average click volume however my EPC has shown a return to normality, for how long, who knows?

[nubchai]

PVs, clicks, EPC and revenue are all increasing each day. Who knows how long it'll last?

[jbayabas]

Horrendous day today. Wow.

[RedBar]

Back to last week's garbage again, so far the only clicks today are from India and Greece ... that's it!

[Ironside]

The weekend was brilliant for me, today is quite slow to get off the mark, but still plenty of time left, fingers crossed.

[Ironside]

@Red bar

What country are you in?

[KaseyM]

Martin Luther King Jr day should result in an exceptional Monday. Pageviews up, CPC at rockbottom and CTR at a reasonable amount.

[EditorialGuy]

Yesterday (Sunday, Jan 17) was our best AdSense day in a long time.

Then again, it was also our best traffic day in a long time.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Yesterday I experienced a huge surge in traffic from Twitter, but Adsense earnings didn't seem to reflect that. What's the value of traffic from social networks? Is it better or worse than organic traffic, or does it not matter?

[RedBar]

@Ironside

Senior Member from GB

[Ironside]

@Red bar

I should have noticed the flag

Does your website target the whole world? Is it.com, or.co.uk?

My niche is fairly strong and I've managed to rank highly for many keywords. However, what I've come to realise is that the UK is very small and even though fish keeping in general is very popular, and that includes my particular niche, there is absolutely no way I would earn much money if I was relying just on the UK and other countries. I've got quite a lot of members from Australia, but even though it's a massive country, not many people live there compared to the UK. It's a good job that I chose a.com domain and that I do well in the US because that is where 99% of my revenue comes from

[RedBar]

I should have noticed the flag

:-)

Global with .com/net/org/biz/info/ae/asia/com.br/co.uk/de/eu/fr/in/it/ru/tr/za ... I've probably forgotten some!

Under normal AdSense conditions even though US PVs are probably 33%, AdSense earnings from the US is usually 50-55%, the UK is second however, generally, it is way, way less.

And my earnings have still not moved in hours ... Where's the red bar?

[kireb]

Both Sunday and Monday above average thanks to a handful of ridiculously high valued clicks (US).

[C0DeZeR0]

Earnings still DOWN //

[Whatagreatdayitis]

Well, that's interesting. Based on today's results, I've just answered my own question regarding social networks.

[filbiz]

Earnings today is down too. Still no improvement for the past week until now. I guess what is happening is the phenomenon called "the adsense limbo rock".

[magician]

Monday, being a holiday, wasn't as bad as I had expected.

[Labi]

Hi everyone, I'm from Malaysia.

I've notice this thread since first week of Jan since the Adsense RPM and CPC has a huge drop, for what I check so far, the RPM still low (drop 40%-50%) from 1st of Jan.

I've check last year statistic, and it increase back to normal after 20th Jan.

At the same time, I've notice there are few BIG competitor from advertising platform, especially Facebook.

Since Google ads is set the minimum bid, but facebook is based on users action - Like/Share/Comment and click. (I did pay fb for traffic too, around Rm1,000 or USD 250 per day)

I've read some comments alot of BIG brand move to facebook ads oready, is that true? So they won't pay google anymore?

Today already 19th, will the RPM back to normal...? I doubt it...

[RedBar]

Oh dear, after a "normal" weekend Monday was back to low CTRs and low EPCs again with India being typical at 52.3% of average for the past 12 months.

Are Google's earnings going to be down 50%? Nah!

[Mentat]

During the working hours in US, the CPC is acceptable, low but acceptable.
After that, when Europe and Asia is active, the CPC drops like a rock!

I've speak with a friend in Europe and it told me that nothing moves in his business.

In Adsense AD Review section I see mostly garbage ads.
Because of the low CPC, I see a lot of Indian/Asiatic sites with Medium visibility, totally unrelated to my site niche.

My Adsense Rep is "dead" since December. It does not respond to any e-mails.

[LuckyD]

Wouldn't removing ads in the review section decrease competition for your inventory, hence reduce your overall CPC?

[nubchai]

The last few days I'm seeing a recovery with higher numbers each day. Not as good as last year, but improving.

[breeks]

Red Bar Here

We're sorry, some data in this report is delayed, Alphabet Inc.is in the process of acquiring another property and this may impact your payments.

:)

[Ironside]

DITTO

[LuckyD]

no red bar, although I wish it would be there, sitting here looking at my miserable January stats