May 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[Mentat]

April 2016 [webmasterworld.com] was by far the worst month in my Adsense history, since the beginning.
Low payment (CPC), but now they removed the "Nessie arrows" and CTR took another dive.

I believed that it cannot get any worse, but I was wrong.

So, let's hope we will see some improvements/communications about this dire situation in May 2016.

P.S. 30 of April and 1st of May are holidays in many parts of the world...

[eek2121]

April wasn't bad. It wasn't March, but it wasn't bad. Looking forward to see what May brings.

[ww2015]

Dismal April - have started the process of moving away from Adsense - 1c US clicks are a joke and below just about everything else available. 0.03% CTR indicates terrible inventory and customer matching.

Future looks bad for the average to small adsense publisher - the inventory seems to be moving to higher performers, alternate networks, alternate mediums, and preferred publishers who aren't in the adsense system.

Cant say i'll be sorry to remove adsense units from my sites - I cant stand the arrogant hands off approach of Google, the sheer guess work required to figure out whats acceptable, the constant instability even at millions of page-views, and frankly the restrictions being a publisher of theirs places on me.

[frankleeceo]

April turned out alright for me, a few of my sites got temporary boosts because they came into trend, the traffic appears to be going away though.

Continue to diversify and hit more revenue stream appears to be the trend. Tailor to mobile users is the key to survive for the next couple of years.

Been seeing the term "moment" when it comes to advertising, perhaps ads will become even more sophisticated with more real time machine bidding, intention based, and exact geo location placement biddings. Maybe some of the bizarre things that we have been seeing is machine learning gone wild and scaling gone wrong at some point. It now feels like a big stock exchange that can collapse when one of the major exchange nodes become malfunctioned.

However, the trend still suggests much lower average CPC's, with occasionally sky high CPC for those specific audiences at the right place at the right time.

It feels like a big slot machine, but things are definitely evolving.

RPM appears to be higher than first quarter, but still lower than March. Hope that my earning will raise as summer draws near with people having more time on their hands.

[londrum]

if you look further down the road, then adblocking might even help our earnings (ironically) by helping to scale back interest based ads.

if there's one thing that adblocking has shown us, it's that customers don't want to be followed around the net.

so maybe proper contextual ads will make a comeback? that's what I'm hoping.
imagine it: every advert matching our subject matter -- just like the old days!

[ember]

if there's one thing that adblocking has shown us, it's that customers don't want to be followed around the net.

IBAs are my best paying ads. I'd like more of them.

[RedBar]

Tailor to mobile users is the key to survive for the next couple of years.

All but three of my sites are beautifully optimised for mobile, their earnings are still going down except for one niche widget .co.uk site which has almost a 4% CTR for 2016 so far ... I have no idea why!

[Chronos Slayer]

I don't know what to say guys, this is just not acceptable. USA desktop RPM $0.45. I never seen this low for USA desktop traffic. Google need to fix it or I have to find another network which pay more thn this.

[nubchai]

April was a good month. They clawed back less than 1/2 percent. I sometimes do get the feeling that Adsense places a cap on monthly earning for sites.

[breeks]

14% clawback of my meager Adsense earnings

salt on the wound courtesy of Google

last month was .4%

[jjoz]

Whether it's coincidence or not, May 1 has me back to pre-April earnings. I hope this is a sign of things to come. It seems interesting that April 1 -> BAM -> earning down 70% and stay down to April 30, then May 1 -> BAM -> earnings back to normal.

[kireb]

1.2% clawback for me, the highest ever. April was better than March but still below 2015's.

[marsradio]

14% clawback of my meager Adsense earnings

OUCH!

Have you ever had that much of a take-back at the end of the month before? That's messed up!

[Aniston Dillo]

13% clawback for me. lowest earning ever because of lowest RPM only. April average RPM 0.40 $

[trebuchet]

I lost about three percent in March and that was annoying enough. If I'd lost 14 percent then I'd be asking some serious questions of Google.

[RedBar]

The good news, 0.276% clawback.

The bad news, the worst start to a new month, ever, with the USA not even coming to the game with 3rd lowest-ever PVs, 2nd lowest-ever clicks plus 3rd lowest-ever earnings at 8.7% of average.

Since it has been a holiday weekend for many I'll see what tomorrow brings however at this level AdSense is NonSense for me.

[NickMNS]

Here is a break down of my month of April:
Overall traffic increased by 15% (from GA)
Page views increase by about 18%
clicks increased 23%
But !
revenue increased a meager 5%

The mix of visitors by device stay unchanged 40% desktop 60% other.
and revenue by device was also unchanged.

Conclusion:
I am pleased by the fact that my traffic increased over the month of April. I will attribute this to benefits of my site update that I did in February, a positive sign for sure. It is hard pill to swallow though that financial compensation is not following suit. It seems that I am improving only to stay alive, despite all my efforts thus far I am unable to get ahead.

[breeks]

Worst clawback until last month was 4%

Average under 1%

Not worth the effort to contact Adsense, answers are always the same old "talking points"

When Google started out they wanted to "change the world". Now they want to "own the world."

[NickMNS]

I don't see what all the fuss is about with the claw-back, it is part of the deal, it happens every month to varying degrees. Obviously if you have 14% claw-back that seems more worrisome. If I were in that situation, I would take a deep look as to what is going with my site and were the traffic is coming from.

For the record I had about 2% claw-back.

[EditorialGuy]

April was a good month for us. Mind you, nearly all of our AdSense revenue comes from desktop/laptop/tablet users.

[MrSavage]

2/3 through today and I have 77cents.

[azlinda]

if there's one thing that adblocking has shown us, it's that customers don't want to be followed around the net.

Since the only source of income on my site is advertising, I would prefer that ad block users don't use it. I now have code on my website to show ads to people with ad block on. I don't care if they stay or not. I'm working my behind off to give them what they want, and if they don't care to see a few ads, then I can do without them.

[trebuchet]

Well said, azlinda. Cue the usual responses, e.g. "your content isn't that valuable", "they'll get it elsewhere", "once you upload it, you don't own it".

RPM continues to blow. The first two days of May have been around the appalling levels of February and March. CTR isn't the culprit for a change. It's approaching 1%, which only shows how little these ads are paying once clicked.

My traffic for the first third of 2016 was up 30%, on the back of my hard work on content creation and SEO. My earnings were down 25%, on the back of who knows what. But I'm so relieved that Google is still doing OK...

[MrSavage]

I'm now at 83 cents with about 3 hours left in my day. So my first post today was afternoon. Can you fathom movement of 6 cents in hours and hours later? It's comical actually.

[MrSavage]

Ended day with 94 cents.

[RedBar]

Shall I state the blatantly obvious?

Red Bar as usual .!.!.!

[netmeg]

First three days of the month have gone amazingly well, considering. And it's only a bit after 10am.

[nomis5]

It's going very well for me at the beginning of May. Having said that the 2nd May was a Bank Holiday and that's always good news for two of my sites. Roll on the end of May Bank Holiday!

UK, informational, but the US is very slowly but surely becoming an increasing factor. I hope that continues because there are loads more people in the US compared to the UK!

[Mentat]

Well, my Arrows in the text ads are still missing and this means about -40% :(

It's a disaster and there is no sign of coming back!

I've done all the recommended things (also approved by Adsense rep), but the damn arrows (nessie) are still missing!

[RedBar]

Red bar gone yet no increase in clicks even though PVs have doubled, total AdSense income failure insofar as I am concerned.

I'm hardly surprised with the totally non-relevant ads I am seeing and the SAME one on every page for some sites.