April 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

March 2016 was the first sign that the things could get better, let's see April 2016.
1st of April is not very promising, with -30% revenue vs last week.

[kireb]

April starts with a very, very, meagre RPM. Not a good sign.

[trebuchet]

April 1st RPM back to the pitiful level of early March.

On the bright side, 'invalid traffic' clawback for March earnings was just a few dollars, much less than previous months.

[Maximum44]

April 1st. Desktop performace issue? Clicks are 50% from previous day. We do get a little bit of volume. We are like 500 clicks off normal while pageviews is the same. Seems most of it has to do with desktop. Mobile clicks is down as well but not as much at all.

Another thing i noticed. It seems to affect a particular area of the site. But just the horizontal ads. The 300 x 250 was not affected at all.

Really hope it is a fluke, because it does not make much sense!

[Mentat]

Very bad payment, but in my case, I see a lot of blank banners :(

[dethfire]

April starting off poor. Today's RPM is very low. Maybe 50% down.

[nubchai]

Good luck to us all!

[breeks]

February finalized earnings lost over $200.00, March lost $20.00. April $2.00 :)

[EditorialGuy]

April 1 was the beginning of a new month and a new quarter. It's always a bad idea to draw conclusions from one day's statistics, but it's an even worse idea under these circumstances.

[Maximum44]

I agree, way too early to draw any conclusions from one days stats. The stats tell me though that the drop was from desktop ads. Maybe good desktop inventory is down this early in the quarter. Impressions was the same, but the CTR was about half! Lets hope for a better weekend! ;)

[Roman Abramovich]

Decent enough for now, Page RPM £3.98

[Ironside]

@Roman Abramovich I often get page RPM that's high, but it doesn't seem to make any difference to how much money you get for each click. Sometimes my page RPM can be £3.50 p one minute, then half an hour later it's dropped half of it.

[Roman Abramovich]

Yeah you're right, it's meaningless if not making the correct amount, but yesterday with on avg 3000 visitors I made over £10, today I am on track to do the same, so as long as it remains I will be relatively happy. I wont hold my breath though as last month at one stage I was £1-£2 a day, that's when I turned it all off and added affiliate banners instead.

[Ironside]

@Roman

It makes for pretty depressing viewing, but I've been looking back at October 2013. That month my highest page RPM was £5.40, the lowest was £3.10. The highest impression RPM was £2.48, the lowest £1.47 I was averaging around 5500 page views and around 11,500 impressions. That month I earned just short of £700.

Let's look at the figures for March 2016. The highest page RPM was £2.68, the lowest was 66p. The highest impression RPM was 86p, the lowest 32p. Earnings were a quarter of October 2013

I can't see things going back to what they were 2 1/2 years ago

[Mentat]

April 1 was the beginning of a new month and a new quarter.

And nice weather outside, so the advertisers forgot to open the campaigns?

It's the lowest payment for me this year and I really did not believe I can reach this new low point!

[koan]

I do hope it's the new quarter effect because yesterday and today are dire.

[WhoKnows111]

27,28 March were sort of okay... 29 good and last 4 days down by 80% of 29th ... it's seriously ridiculous

Added one banner into header with affiliate offer that is geo-located to show only to US people. Get clicked on average xx times a day. Apparently 3 adsense ads in prime locations that are showing to all visitors get clicked xx/2 times

[JS_Harris]

My biggest gripe against adsense is that they allow one ad to hijack the entire ad space because it almost always looks horrible on my site. In 160x600 units it leaves a lot of whitespace below the ad. April is starting out OK for me so no complaints.

[vdR7]

there is a litle deference from january,this april is poor and low hope it will be better from tomorow.

[TheWebGuru]

WHOA!

April has been a massive drop compared to the second half of March.

My April RPM (heading 3 days in) is showing that April may be even lower than January this year( which had my lowest RPM on record)

Even my " worse case scenario" calculation , has now been eclipsed by the current trends.

This is not being negative, just outlining what is currently taking place.

We have all heard many theories on why / how this is happening, and some of those factors may or may not, be partly, or wholly to blame.

The fact remains that a large number of publishers are being affected, whilst others seem to have been spared.

The possibility of a "CAP" on earnings, may hold some truth.

The advise given above by other publishers to " not rely on AdSense" and to find other alternative means of earning

both online and offline, makes sense.

Also, we can try experimenting whilst doing some research to find out a little more on what may, or may nor work at the moment,

Yes, what's taking place is hugely disappointing.

Also, this time, I do not believe there will be any light at the end of the tunnel, or major turn - arounds

It is almost as if the carpet has been pulled out from under our feet( for many publishers not all)

Sitting around waiting for a "Magic wand" to appear that will make it all better again, is not going to cut it "this time around" and will only lead to a greater loss in earning potential due to our not going out and doing something else and making the most of our time.

[JS_Harris]

I posted that my earnings are OK above but I want to add that my mobile earnings a propping up my desktop earnings which look horrid compared to the same period last year. It seems that mobile ads pay more than desktop, at least on my site.

[TheWebGuru]

To JS Harris and everyone else.

There does seem to be a drop in certain desktop(only) related Ads(rpm) and a shift to higher performance for " all devices" ads.

Though, from my last piece of research, not all mobile apps are displaying ads correctly, or, in many cases, not showing ads at all.

Which balances out the " high performing mobile" ads with the "No performing" mobile ads.

The vast majority of traffic is moving to mobile, sooner rather than later.

This is especially true for YouTube.

Publishers will need to optimize their websites and / or YouTube Channels far more towards mobile Apps, especially mobile phones.

This is where the future of web traffic is set to be. "The Future is Mobile"!

Though, there will always be a small dedicated group of Desktop users for quite some time to come,. ..

[Mentat]

My good CPC is 0.2+
My bad CPC is ~0.15-0.2
This weekend CPC = 0.1

[Roman Abramovich]

They say not to place a large ad above the fold on mobile, I have always placed the 320x100 as recommended. They then tell you better to use responsive and it has the little recommended for mobile on it. So I place that for mobile and Adsense are making this into a large square above the fold for one way, and a leaderboard the other way. Now I am fairly confident Adsense are breaking their own terms here with the large square.
To be on the safe side I put the 320x100 back in place. Has anyone experienced this with responsive.

Another Q, I visited a site which had Adsense on mobile, but the ad they used always stayed on top of page, even whilst you scrolled down it was always visible, is that breaking the rules also? Or is this the usual different rules for big companies and the little guys get pushed over the bridge the first rule you break.

[srgolub]

I've noticed a significant drop in the number of text ads being displayed vs. Image and Rich Media (and a drop in RPM as well) starting April 1 or 2. Anyone else seeing this or have an explanation?

[FourDegreez]

March 21 through 31 saw a nice (albeit modest) increase in RPM. Unfortunately April is back down to 2016 averages. Hoping that will sort out eventually.

[livedarryl]

srgolub. I have noticed a significant drop in the number of text ads being displayed and the ones that are showing do not have arrows on them. I have confirmed this with several other partner sites are seeing the same. Here is what I know so far:

- Started on 4/1/16
- Arrows removed from Chrome only (reviewed in Safari and Firefox and looks fine)
- Tablet traffic still has the arrows and text ads
- Some newer sites do not have this issue

I hope it is just a test. I have paused all of my traffic acquisition

[jbayabas]

Wow, just bad. I did not expect it will get this worst. Just wow. I'm in total shock.

[MrSavage]

Easily, without question, the lowest point I've ever experienced with Adsense. Brutal wouldn't describe it. I'm not working on websites right now, all I'm doing is see what I'm unloading and cancelling. Clearing house because this is a joke and frankly even if I rebound I'm not sure I could trust Google at this point. It's not just Adsense that stinks, but I'll leave that alone. Most of us are smart enough to see the big picture.

[Maximum44]

Just as a side note, seems inventory on Exponential is low as well, only have a 10% fill since April 1st. Media.net is going strong though. Adsense still sucks at the moment. Almost 50% off :(