March 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

January and February [webmasterworld.com] have been a disaster for most of us.
I believe that we expect a "Spring miracle" for this month.

[Whatagreatdayitis]

The week before Easter is usually a "spring break" week, so people with the means are on vacation or, at the very least, it's not business as usual. Tomorrow is Good Friday. Some schools in the U.S. are off. My website is very sensitive to vacations and breaks, so I really notice their existence in my stats and in the earnings. At the beginning of the week was Nowrooz, which is a holiday in Iran celebrating the new year. There again, I can see a small difference reflected in the stats. It's an interesting phenomenon, but worth paying attention to.

[RyuUK]

@Whatagreatdayitis Yep, expecting Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday to be pretty shocking.

What is the point in Easter? 9/5 folk may enjoy the time off, but when you work from home every day is the same = Grind.

[nubchai]

@RyuUK Easter is a big holiday/ holy day and a big family gathering day. So 9 to 5 folks and work at home folks will likely be away from their computers and tablets until later in the day.

[EditorialGuy]

Re Easter week: I'd half-anticipated that it might be quiet, but so far, it's going like gangbusters (even more for affiliate commissions than for AdSense). But then, we always do well on Super Bowl Sunday, too. My hypothesis is that people who aren't on vacation during Easter week (or who aren't watching football) get antsy and make up for those who are away from their computers. (I say "computers" because we earn most of our revenue from desktop/laptop/tablet traffic.)

Mind you, things might quiet down during Easter weekend, when a lot of people are boiling eggs and eating chocolate bunnies. We'll see.

[jbayabas]

From good to horrible. I just don't get it.

[MrSavage]

Yesterday may quite possibly be the worst earnings I've had in the program. Forget about my early years of doing this. There is low, lower, even lower than that, and then this. I haven't looked today.

[jbayabas]

Today is bad. It's like earning is stuck. Adsense is back to its old ways again -- robbing publishers.

[Mentat]

My CTR is going down like a rock!

[avalon37]

Lot's of hands raised. Doesn't seem like I'm an outlier.

[trebuchet]

Yes it's impossible to form conclusions about how Adsense is going from a few forum users. There have always been "complainers" here. What's notable in recent times though is that their complaints have taken on a common theme: low CTR and low EPC, especially in the US. I've also seen similar concerns on Twitter and in other forums. I have no doubt that some publishers continue to do well with Adsense and good luck to them. But there does seem to be a downward trend for a lot of publishers.

[EditorialGuy]

I have no doubt that some publishers continue to do well with Adsense and good luck to them. But there does seem to be a downward trend for a lot of publishers.

That certainly wouldn't be surprising. AdSense has evolved over the years, and so has the advertiser side of the program, AdWords. Placements are a good example of AdWords and AdSense have evolved: They put more control in the hands of advertisers, and they benefit some publishers while shrinking the available pool of ads and revenue for others. The latter publishers aren't being cheated or mistreated; AdSense just isn't working for them as well as it did when the program was simpler and advertisers had less control.

[trebuchet]

That's undoubtedly a factor in the general decline of Adsense revenues. It doesn't really explain why CTR has tumbled since Christmas, like someone at Google has flicked the 'Halve All Clicks' switch for many publishers. My guess is that the criteria for a successful click has now changed. It would be nice to know, though of course Adsense's PR continues to be handled by Sergeant Schultz.

[marsradio]

No wonder Adsense is in the toilet! Numerous sites I've visited today...even eBay...and I'm being served ads in foreign languages. Spanish, what seems like Southeast Asian, etc. Absolutely ludicrous!

[RedBar]

For some reason I've been getting Polish on one of my sites.

[scottb]

Some of my larger client sites are seeing no change in RPMs over the last six months. Others have taken a huge dive.

Right now I'm assuming that whether or not a site declines is based either on a change in AdSense ranking factors or certain categories that are sensitive to the economy (or both).

U.S. corporate earnings have declined three quarters in a row and are expected to drop again this quarter. That's a bad trend for advertising.

We will find out more when Google releases its first quarter earnings report in a few weeks. I suspect the numbers will show that Google is shifting better-paying ads from partners over to its own sites to prop up its profit and stock price.

[Ironside]

What period of time do you assign to an ad to test whether it's worth leaving in place or removing and trying another position?

[JustForAdsense]

I have seen an ad(s?) the past day and a half or two now that seriously takes 15-20 seconds to load and show. That is insane. I take huge pride in my site load speed and optimizations, and the entire page is loaded and function, yet the address bar stays spinning and the user (I) do not see the ad in a top prioriity ad placement spot. Fast loading is everything. And this is insanely, insanely slow. I dont even know how they can get away with showing ads that are remotely close to being this slow? Maybe that's why my RPM is already in the tank (further? wasnt sure that was possible...) for today. Wow.

[RedBar]

Wow, this is quieter than Xmas or New Year's Day ... Who are all these lucky people getting so much holiday time?

[RyuUK]

@JustForAdsense Do you not use the Review Centre? If you know the URL you can run a complete site block.

[woody midrib]

I'm seeing considerably better numbers in March. RPMs have increased steadily and are now only 10% below the second half of 2015. They're still 35% below March 2015 and it's too soon to call it a reversal of the downtrend, though.

Today shapes up to be especially strong as my main site does best on holidays and sundays.

[EditorialGuy]

My guess is that the criteria for a successful click has now changed.

That's always a possibility, and from an advertiser's point of view (and from the POV of publishers who are in it for the long term), tightening up the "successful click" criteria would be a good thing.

Still, we need to remember that CPC ads are only one aspect of AdSense. On our site, for example, CPM bids are bringing in a higher average RPM than CPC bids are, interest-based ads outnumber contextual ads, and text ads are a small percentage of total ad impressions. The days when AdSense meant "pay-per-click contextual text ads and nothing else" are long gone.

[londrum]

check out this thread from exactly 10 years ago, it's the same old story -- [webmasterworld.com ]

i wonder what their "poor numbers" actually were, though? we'd probably be doing cartwheels and throwing parties if we had the numbers now that they were complaining about back then.

they were even having the same conversation about adblockers ten years ago as well -- [webmasterworld.com ]

[RedBar]

Ouch, my lowest-ever click volume day at 11.76% of average

My lowest-ever earnings' day at 10.36%

My 10th lowest PVs ever.

This long weekend is a write-off for me and historically it's looking similar to previous years however I wonder whether next week it will recover, it's so far down now can it revive?

[Mentat]

It's Easter! Friday-Monday is a 4 day weekend holiday.

[EditorialGuy]

It's Easter! Friday-Monday is a 4 day weekend holiday.

Even in countries where Easter is observed, the degree of observation varies. In much of the U.S., for example, people are expected to work on Good Friday, and Easter Monday isn't a legal holiday.

For what it's worth, we had a very strong AdSense day yesterday, and affiliate sales were pretty decent. I'd expect today to be OK, too, because the Saturday before Easter probably isn't that big a deal to most people.

[RedBar]

My US PVs were way down on average yesterday and even further down today ... so far today US earnings are at 4.2% of the month's US daily average.

Yep, it's my industry, I know, I didn't expect a stellar Easter however neither did I expect the total disaster it's turning out to be.

[jbayabas]

It looks like I'm going to hit a record today -- record low. S H I T !

[JustForAdsense]

Record low today as well. Actually reached out to a very appealing company today that might very well end up replacing my adsense with. Hopefully. Testing will begin the moment i can login and get started.

I haven't seen an RPM this low...since....seriously....forever? Absolutely utter garbage. I have no idea what they're trying to do, besides completely run the AdSense program as a whole.

[breeks]

Just the opposite here, best day of the year.

Almost back to this time last year.

Nice to see its still possible, but expect it not to last.

[JustForAdsense]

What on earth. Lucky you I guess. I get quite a bit of highly relevant traffic (basically all organic....and traffic has been steady/slowly growing). So i spend tons of time and money every day to do what i can to keep it all in tact. Anyway, because I (was) making a respectable amount each and every day, drastic changes are pretty darn obvious; when you're talking 15-20,000 highly relevant niche related organic traffic users per day, it adds up. or it doesnt. and you know somethings up, like right now. this is seriously going to be my worst day in over a year I belive. And that was bad back then, simply because my site was mucchhhhhh smaller/less of a leader. so to see this now makes absolutely ZERO sense.