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.

[RyuUK]

@Ironside
Have you tried a 336x280 unit above "Health Articles"? Surely that would trigger a higher CTR than a link unit.:)

[Ironside]

There isn't enough room above the left-hand menu. I think you can get a maximum of about 250 pixels wide in that space. I think that particular link unit gets a lot of clicks because the keywords are always relevant, even if the subject isn't once you click on them. But that particular unit which I have on most of my articles gets by far the most clicks and earns me the most money.

[RyuUK]

I see, never tried link units before. Hope that large unit works out for you mate.

CTR has been good at my end, but CPC remains at 50%.

[RedBar]

This is one seriously crazy month, yesterday my earnings were 267.8% of my daily average so far howver and even more weird is my daily click volume ... let's take Tuesday the 1st March as 100% for clicks:

1. 100%
2. 56%
3. 100%
4. 56%
5. 100%
6. 52%
7. 105%
8. 68%
9. 100%

I'm guessing about the 60% for today but who knows, sure as heck not me!

[RedBar]

Oh, and PVs looked to be back to normal yesterday for me, anyone else or was everything a fluke?

[filbiz]

I redesigned my sites this past few weeks. I hope the high earning has something to do with it. Oh please I hope so!

Hi jbayabas, did you replace or change your ads sizes? or just relocated your existing ads?

[jbayabas]

Hi jbayabas, did you replace or change your ads sizes? or just relocated your existing ads?

No, I completely redesigned the sites. Same ad sizes but different ad placements. I gave the "half page" ad size 300x600 more prominence and placed 2 "large rectangle" ads 336x280 in the middle of the homepage.

[breeks]

Today I am seeing two 300x250 ads showing in a 300x600
No space between them, butt to butt.
Looks OK but a little padding between ads would be better.

[RedBar]

Interesting, I had a red bar earlier, now I have inflated PVs and an EPC in the pan ... no coincidence!

[RyuUK]

Great traffic = Crappy earnings. This month is going to be a right shocker.

[kireb]

Could the pathetic low US RPM have anything to do with the elections going on? Are advertisers finding greener pastures this year? My US RPM is 55% of that of March 2015.

[kireb]

SEOPTI: I fully distance myself from your racist slur.

[RedBar]

This gets weirder by the day, I've had extra clicks added to both the 9th and 3rd of the month so now I am:

1. 100%
2. 56%
3. 105%
4. 56%
5. 100%
6. 52%
7. 105%
8. 68%
9. 105%
10. 68%

Surely I'm not going to get 105% today?

[RyuUK]

Just took about 20 mins to clear out the junk from the Ad Review Centre. All the high impression ads were tripe. You guys may wanna check out yours.

[Maleda]

@RyuUK - yeah same issue here too, sat yesterday and did a massive clear out!

[RyuUK]

Hope it helps your revenue mate.

Much better earnings here today. Could be a glimmer of hope that the system ain't completely screwed.

[RedBar]

Inflated US PVs dump again!

[jbayabas]

Been having a somewhat good earnings since my redesign. Could be my visitors are liking the new layout or I'm just enjoying updating the sites because I like the new design.

If you're using Wordpress , I suggest you invest in some well designed premium themes. They only cost me US$40 per site. What a great investment.

I'm not fully happy with my earnings but it's better than the last few months which was 80-85% down. Now, it's only 70% down. Since the other network is also giving me almost half of what I earn with Adsense, that would make my earnings 40% down. Still not there to my average earning. I guess I'll just have to be patient.

[JustForAdsense]

I lurk this thread every day currently, since things fairly recently started getting so terrible despite traffic being on par - all with highly relevant search engine traffic...

Anyway I've been seeing double loaded ads all day. And I *just* saw a TRIPLE LOADED AD. Which is why i had to make this account to share... All 3 ad units.....above the fold...on my main site (quite popular).....were the exact same text ad. Really? I guess this goes without saying, but my RPM is lower than it's ever been but I'm absolutely certain advertisers are paying noticeably more right now to advertise on it. (Yes, when I say noticeably more I still am factoring in our 68% revenue share).

I'm just very displeased with the past 2-3 weeks now to say the least. I guess I'm speechless, not too sure what to do about everything...just working on growing my site - as traffic grows ... im "happy", but i'll continue dabbling and experimenting with new monetization methods to hopefully, ideally replace this one day. Plenty of people are willing to pay more for this specific exposure, so the less time I waste with this pitiful RPM the better - unless things quickly turn back around...which I unfortunately doubt... It was just fine for me a month ago.....if it goes back to that then all of my grudges will be settled.

[Ironside]

@JustforAdSense if you have been reading the boards then you will probably know that a lot of us are in the same boat. Most of us were earning two or three times more two years ago than we are now. I don't think anyone has come up with a conclusive answer to why this has happened. I maintain it's because more people are jumping on the bandwagon and trying to earn money through AdSense, there just isn't enough to go around. Two years ago I could switch my computer on in the morning and I would be up to £15 already, my earnings were really good considering the amount of people I was getting to my website. However, I'm lucky to make half of what I was making then, although still not a bad figure.

What would be interesting to hear is how the big guns are doing, people like the guy who runs Plenty of Fish, and some of the other big AdSense earning websites. Obviously they may not want to disclose whether AdSense earnings have dropped, but if they have suffered as well then there's not much hope for the rest of us :-)

[RedBar]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld JustForAdsense

Surely I'm not going to get 105% today?

Ha, nope, just to mix it up a little they gave me 60% but US EPC was way above average therefore I had a 126% earnings' day even though all other EPCs were way down ... go figure!

[Rasputin]

Our own adsense is pretty much the same per visitor as it was last year, and the year before.

One thing that stands out reasing some of the comments above such as

gave the "half page" ad size 300x600 more prominence and placed 2 "large rectangle" ads 336x280 in the middle of the homepage.

All 3 ad units.....above the fold

Sites that have too many ads, especially if the same ads also appear on mobile sites (ie ads are not responsive) will rapidly run into problems with smartpricing, the 'too many ads' penalty and also with th adsense strict rules on 'accidental click removal'.

I know this isn't the problem for everyone here (adwords has many more competitors now than a few years ago and companies aren't keen on wasting money anymore so cpc tends to fall over time) but unfortunately adding lots more prominent and larger ads to a site tends to have a short term gain and then a swift fall in income which is hard to rectify.

[EditorialGuy]

We're doing very well with AdSense. Our approach is:

1) One 300 x 600 ad per page (in the right margin).

2) No micromanaging of ads--we just block broad categories that we don't like and don't want to see.

3) We ignore the "optimization" advice that shows up in our AdSense console--stuff like blending ads into content or unblocking junk categories.

4) We have plenty of in-depth editorial content, with ads playing a secondary role. (As opposed to "an advertising site with editorial as filler".)

5) No AdSense ads on our mobile pages.

It probably helps that were in a niche where readers are researching how to spend their money, but that may not be as essential as it was in the days when CPC ruled. (For us, CPM bids now have a higher average RPM than CPC bids do, and far more of our ads are "rich media" or "image" ads than text ads these days.)

[azlinda]

EditorialGuy, thank you for the advice. I'm in the process of going from five ads to two ads at this moment. The pages that I have finished are loading much faster also, so that's a plus!

[jbayabas]

So much blank ads lately. I'm seeing it more and more these past few weeks. Same with everyone?

I'm not sure if it's just browser bug or something else. I'm seeing most of the blanks ads in safari, but fine in firefox.

[RedBar]

Same with everyone?

Yesterday was particularly bad on a couple of my sites with blanks in every slot.

[ken_b]

Those seeing blank ad spots

What browser(s) are you using?

I had that happen a lot a while back with FF, but saw the ads on IE (of course a fraction of a second difference in calling an ad on a different browser could account for that).

[Vader1206]

Today's RPM has had a nasty crash for me compared to most of the last few days/weeks. Same for anyone else?

[dethfire]

Today may be the worst in 5 years. ugh

[nomis5]

Best day ever for my current main website. It is the season for increased page views etc but this is improvement is a couple of weeks early. A massive amount of intelligent work appears to be paying off.

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