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...

[koan]

Funny how desktop traffic is now premium traffic. I also have a smart phone, like most people nowadays, I just don't get how it got to replace so much of the previous desktop web browsing instead of adding to it, it's cramped, slow, often frustrating. It's fine to get that specific info on the go, but more in depth reading? Must be a generational thing.

[nubchai]

@koan Yeah my friends and I will use our smart phones to look something up that we might be debating. But for reading we use Kindle fires, Ipads etc. And for serious browsing/research/reading we use the desktop.

[Squarix9]

koan: I'm from the millenial generation and I also don't understand what's so great about surfing on a smartphone. But there must be something better about it, since mobile now makes up 80% of my traffic.

[ember]

Was your site already mobile friendly?

Nope. It was designed for desktop and still is. I don't see the point in re-designing it for mobile when mobile does not pay. Mobile will continue to eat away at revenue, I'm sure, but going all mobile now wouldn't get me anything.

[NickMNS]

@ember with all due respect, to me this is a very short sighted approach. Making a site responsive will not be paid for directly by any boost in mobile traffic. But in my mind it is the indirect impact that will hurt you. First making a site responsive should not be any more difficult or costly than simply updating your site. So unless you plan on not updating your site, expect to face the consequence, that is that users will likely feel that your site is dated and untrustworthy, this in turn will negatively impact your desktop traffic.

Second a user may find your site on a mobile device, browse a bit and then may decide that it is worth further reading and then come back a later date on his/her desktop. Serving a desktop page to a mobile user will guarantee that they will never be back. (Side note: I have no way of tracking whether this actually occurs, does anybody have an idea of how this might be done using GA, I imagine if you use user logins, you match accounts and devices, I do not use user logins.)

Monetizing mobile traffic is without a doubt the biggest challenge we currently all face, a challenge with no easy solution, but ignoring mobile traffic imho is the wrong approach.

[WhoKnows111]

Since November every month is worse than previous. So far it seems May won't be any difference...

[Mentat]

Something new is broken!
I had a lot of misleading ads that I've banned months ago.
I've checked and the domains are blocked, in Adsense/Adx setting, but they serve a lot of junk.
Of course, is a new Offensive of Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. adv
I hate them so much!

All domains that trick you to click, in order to install toolbars!

[Jhurwith]

Yesterday was really bad. Anyone else?

[Chronos Slayer]

@Jhurwith you are not alone my friend :( this is just getting worse and worse

[Jhurwith]

Was worse than usual though.

[RyuUK]

Just 2 single clicks reported per 1000 views today. Wow.

[NickMNS]

I just noticed a new feature in the ad review center, when one clicks for details about an ad unit, it now provides a graph of the impressions over time. This is great, we finally can see when and how often ads appear.

[RedBar]

Utterly bizarre numbers from AdSense today, the US and UK have hardly registered any PVs for me, Andorra obviously does not even exist insofar as Google is concerned, another very questionable garbage reporting day.

[trebuchet]

Clicks healthy and slightly up according to Analytics/Statcounter, but CTR only 0.6% according to Adsense. The Phantom Click-Muncher strikes again.

It's time Adsense changed its model from CPC to CPTC (Cost Per Third Click). That's about all it seems to pay out on.

[MrSavage]

Beat this! 16,800.0% from the same day last week. Not a typo! I would say "incredible" but in fact it just say how astronomically S'tty that day was last week. Non the less, who can say their revenues jumped 16,000%. I'm on fire!

[Ironside]

If you imagine what it's like when you are using a small mobile phone to browse the Internet you are not going to sitting back in your chair looking at a large screen, you are going to be scrolling up and down pretty quickly. It's no wonder that many of our ads are no longer being clicked on. I think it's all downhill from here if people continue to browse the Internet from mobile phones. What would be interesting to know is how the larger websites like wiki how are faring up. It's not going to be any different with them, people will still be shovelling up and down the page quickly on a mobile device. I suppose they've got the advantage of having millions of hits each day, but I'm willing to bet you that their revenue has dropped dramatically in the last year

[trebuchet]

Wikipedia doesn't make money from advertising or traffic, so I doubt they care too much.

[Dave_B]

One of my sites pushes out over 1 million ad views a day, my mobile pageviews fall right at 50%.
The site would not be considered responsive but mobile users are given a stripped down mobile template. This allows for different ad channels for mobile instead of the use of responsive ads.

Odd fact: My mobile rpm is roughly 8 times that of desktop.

[NickMNS]

@Ironside, this is why Adsense released page level ads.

[Ironside]

I'm not talking about Wikipedia, I'm talking about wiki how, two completely different websites. Wiki how was listed as one of the top AdSense earning websites a couple of years ago, I think they were bringing in something like quarter of $1 million a month.

[webcentric]

I can say that I believe that Google rolled something out this morning related to Adsense. Ads were not loading on the site and I am seeing ads from domains that were long ago blocked. Sensitive categories also appeared to be on the fritz as well. Thing seem to be somewhat back to normal at the moment but I haven't had a chance to look deeply into the console. It's your ad views are down, this could be the cause.

[ww2015]

Just noticed this over on fat stacks:

'New update: noticing that my mobile RPM has been decreasing starting yesterday, find out it’s due to about 40% drop in CTR. Checked out my site on mobile and I’m getting all image ads. Sure enough I go into my performance reports and see that Google is now showing a large and ever increasing amount of image based ads compared to text. Looks like another also update for mobile specifically.'

So google reduced desktop earnings by 80% by forcing bad image ads into placements, and now look like they're are doing the same with mobile impressions. My gut says this is happening to sites that have external traffic derived from sites other than google properties. The ecosystem they so badly want to protect is their little closed loop of profit from both the advertisers paying 5x over the norm, and the publishers getting a revshare 5x lower than the norm. Its also crazy important to google that they alone dictate whats suitable and good for the citizens of the web.

[breeks]

Google (Walmart)
Facebook (Home depot)
Bing (Costco)
Adsense Publishers ( small, independent stores) <=== vanishing.

[azlinda]

LOL I'm sitting here watching my page views go DOWN. They shaved off about 600 during the last hour. I wonder what's up with that.

[MrSavage]

I'm like that guy dying in the middle of the desert. Imagine what a drink would be like. A big glass of water full of ice cubes. F me. Bring it Google. I could use a save right now. F me it's nice to get a click that isn't worth 2 cents. I swear I get that glass of water I'll be good for a bit. F me.

[WhoKnows111]

I have websites where people go to solve some sort of issue, actively looking for solutions so I don't have issue with CTR (as opposed probably sites with entertainment/images etc)

My overall account CTR is the same it was in November when I earned 100+% more than now.

CTR of my main earning websites is actually UP by about 15% but CPC goes to f*ck. And no I don't believe the talks about FB, mobile etc - it hasn't changed so drastically fast and this finance niche is extremely highly competitive.

[Ironside]

I've really come to the conclusion that your AdSense layout won't make the slightest bit of difference to how much money you are. If most of your visitors are using your website from a mobile device then you can forget earning big money. I have been looking at various websites, some of the ones that supposedly make big money just to see what sort of layout they use. So I have changed my page layout slightly. Before I used to have category menus in the left-hand column with a 160 x 600 skyscraper above some of them, but always 200 x 90 link unit right on top of the menu. I've now swapped everything to the right-hand side of the page. I have put a responsive unit above the page heading so that this comes up as a nice little rectangle just before the content on a mobile device. Because I've done quite well with 300 x 600 units and because they will show perfectly okay on a mobile device I've located some of them in the second paragraph of text. I was hoping that this morning may show some good results, unfortunately it looks as though I might be wasting my time completely. I'm going to give it a couple of days just to see what happens. However, whereas I normally get quite a few clicks on the 200 x 90 unit, I haven't had one single click today.

I don't mind sharing my layout ideas with other members so you can see the link below. I don't mind anyone commenting on the layout, good or bad, all goes to help at the end of the day.

I know that I can make quite a bit of money from my website, done it before. Whether it's possible to find the perfect layout that works remains to be seen, but it's worth a try.



[oscarfishlover.com...]

[smilie]

>> @koan: Funny how desktop traffic is now premium traffic.

Because mobile is ridden with clickfraud botnets that you can't easily identify (nor Google wants you to).
And that can't be blocked by IP as mobile IPs are dynamic from pools. Because you can't tell whether it was legit user or some rogue app launching the browser from a mobile device. The non-zombie, non-fraudulent, converting traffic naturally becomes "premium".

On my ecommerce, my mobile user conversion is below 5%. I could do 95 other site improvements to improve life for desktop customers before even touching "mobile".

>> @NickMNS: First making a site responsive should not be any more difficult or costly than simply updating your site

I have two large sites that were build before 2005 , so hence with tech of early 2000th in mind - no divs, tables , barely any css. I already spent a year on one site in a redesign and still am not finished.

Second site I am not redoing - and this was Adsense largest earner - since it is only making 1/10 in Adsense revenue from 3 years ago, on maybe 60% of traffic. And its my lunch money now, it costs more to host it now (dedicated server, DB etc) than it earns in Adsese. Who will pay me for a responsive design, Google, who took content, images and made out ok on it? Where's my ROI.

[edited by: smilie at 1:28 pm (utc) on May 13, 2016]

[smilie]

>> @breeks: Adsense Publishers ( small, independent stores) <=== vanishing.

When Google increased blackbox prices from 10 cents to $1-$2 (in my niche I've seen $3-$4) per their data crunching of your "free" "analytics.
First it was a feeding frenzy for publishers. Then advertisers slowly understood they can't make any money paying $2-$4 a click, no way no how.
So while still some "unsophisticated" advertisers exist, they are vanishing quickly. What's left is big contract advertisers, some who are temporary (like startups), and some like me who has 3500 keywords and all my CPC capped way below $1 at my break-even point. Because as soon as you hit that above $1/click mark, you'll get clickfraud botnets.
I could be paying Google 10 times what I do now, had my clicks returned to a reasonable 30-40 cents where I AS MERCHANT CAN MAKE MONEY.

So, as other advertisers do the same and slowly turn off unprofitable campaigns, Google is taking more and more of your and mine Adsense margins in order to show profit every quarter. Hence a death of independent publishers who can't survive on what's left.

That is a death spiral that's about to hit the wall for Google, luckily for us. They (Google/Facebook etc) are still feeding on 200+ "unicorn" fake billion dollar valuation startups . 150 of which will be bankrupt very shortly, so they'll eventually HAVE TO go back to more realistic market values for the clicks. They'll have to find a middle ground and let both merchants and publishers make money too.

I suggest Google resolves this by:
1) Lowering their first page bids 50%-80% to attract real merchants
2) Going public with their publisher revenue split, and sticking to that number.

[NickMNS]

@smilie your are describing a chicken and egg type scenario
If you invested in improving your site and bringing up to 2015 standards then maybe your traffic would not be 60% of what is was and the added revenues would be worth the investment. But one thing is for sure waiting for the revenue to go back up before investing in any improvements is guaranteed to result in a continued slow and painful demise. It has been more than 10 years and the long run trend is down. What is the ROI on running a site into the ground when the cost to host it is already more than it provides in revenue?