June 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[RedBar]

The meteorological first day of summer for us in the northern hemisphere, let's hope that Google decides to brighten up our days!

[NickMNS]

@MrSavage, it is being discussed here: [webmasterworld.com...]

But i don't see any relevance to what we are seeing now, the case dates back 2008.

[netmeg]

Well into my peak season, and AdSense revenue in 2016 is running roughly 1/3rd to 1/2 what it was in 2015. Fortunately, I sold more direct advertising this year, and Media.net and Facebook are doing better than ever. But this is the AdSense forum. My main observation is that EPC has never been higher (seriously, I'm getting some monster average click values) but CTR has never been lower. And I don't think it's Google. Even Statcounter (whose exit link reporting is spotty at best but sometimes can show a trend if you're obsessive enough to watch it like a hawk) isn't showing many AdSense clicks. Mobile people just don't seem to click.

[EditorialGuy]

Mobile people just don't seem to click.

Assuming that's the case, I wonder if part of the problem isn't the nature of the ads that mobile users are seeing.

Take something like a hotel ad on a travel site:

- A person who's driving along Interstate 80 and looking for a place to spend the night might easily click on a hotel ad.

- On the other hand, a person who's visiting Manhattan and is researching how to get from Chelsea to the Metropolitan Museum of Art probably doesn't have any need to click on a hotel ad, because he or she already has a hotel room.

I'd expect that, over time, Google and advertisers will become smarter about gauging user intent on mobile devices, and the term "contextual" (as it applies to AdSense) will be more nuanced than it is now.

[netmeg]

Since my AdSense sites are all event sites of one type or another, I suspect that when they're looking for information on a specific event (date, times, locations), the ads, even if targeted and interest based, are probably not going to resonate.

On the other hand, if say Taco Bell hits my users with a promo while they're out and about *after* an event - they might have a shot.

User intent is everything, but it's also a bitch to get right.

[Orby]

What a terrible start to June. It just gets worse and worse for me. I'm down 60+ clicks compared to the same time last month. And May was a terrible month. Adsense is near pointless for me anymore. So far no clicks today. Speechless really.

[WhoKnows111]

off topic: how do you implement fb ads on website?

[netmeg]

Google "Facebook Audience Network" and you should be able to find it.

[frankleeceo]

[developers.facebook.com...]

If you do have an active sign up, you can access it via your "apps". I guess mobile websites are all apps in the eyes of facebook. (I am seeing this generalization with a few other network as well).

Process:
Add your site
Implement ad codes
Wait for 1~2 weeks for domain approval ~10 business days roughly.
They follow somewhat inconsistent guidelines in my opinion. Some sites get approved and some denied. I have very similar sites and received different approval decisions.
Add your business information, SSN information for tax purpose.
Reach threshold and get paid.

Note: I have not gotten paid yet from FB audience, haven't met the threshold yet so not sure about their timeliness. I only put them on a handful of my semi test sites and the network doesn't work for my audience.

I do see zero to none support though. At least its not easily accessible or I cant seem to find it anywhere.

[robzilla]

June is off to a good start after a so-so April and May. 30% up vs. same day last month, the app says, but this early in the month it's a tricky statistic because of the weekends.

[netmeg]

Re FB - I haven't had any domains disapproved, and the ones I submitted were approved within 48 hours, FWIW. I haven't been paid yet either, but I haven't been in long enough.

Support was definitely difficult to find, but once you get the magic email address, they respond within 24-48 hours on business days. Don't do weekends, but nobody does weekends.

[RedBar]

Wow, where did all my traffic go? Rankings for most sites look ok however nothing seems to be happening as I seem to be heading to my lowest-ever AdSense PVs' day.

I know I have lost traffic to three of my non-responsive sites with the mid-May mobile update, some are down 50% at least and I won't be updating them to responsive since the effort required v AdSense rewards is so low it just ain't worth the time.

[Ebuzz]

I'm thinking, Adsense must have recovered for most people this month of June. If it was that bad everywhere, across all industries, surely this thread would be more active.

[trebuchet]

No recovery here. Just sick of posting "no change".
My RPM for May and June (so far) are identical. Both are up 10% on the April RPM, so that's something I guess.

[RedBar]

Saturday was the lowest earnings' day of the month for me and one of my all-time lowest clicks and PVs. If this were an injured horse it would be shot to put it out of its misery.

[netmeg]

No recovery. Wasn't expecting one. Just diversified a bit more is all.

[nomis5]

Doing OK here in the UK. More by luck than judgement I have discovered a sub-niche which is extending my peak season.

Now what I need to do is find a profitable direct affiliate to further capitalise on that. There are normal affiliate channels but I have a sinking feeling that there simply aren't any direct ones available but I will persist.

[azlinda]

Saturday was my highest earnings day in a very long time. Today promises to be good also. But it wasn't all because of Google. Much of it was from native ads.

[JustForAdsense]

Why the f*** are all of the text ads on my site set to very wrong & different colors as to the colors they've been set at (and unchanged) for months/years? This looks *terrible*. I set them for a reason....this is just killing my user experience too... unbelievable.

[Ironside]

@Just for AdSense can you provide a screenshot so I can compare yours to mine, will be interesting to see if there's any difference.

[Ironside]

Absolutely dreadful Monday, hardly earned anything at all.

[Evan Salamanca]

How are you media.net and FBAN earners getting good results off of those? What did you do to optimize? I have both but they earn a combined tenth of what Adsense does.

[RedBar]

I'm just scraping above the minimum daily to make the monthly payout. Yesterday's average EPC was diabolical which is extremely annoying when actual clicks were 150%.

Needless to say there is absolutely no incentive to do any work on sites with AdSense.

[NickMNS]

Needless to say there is absolutely no incentive to do any work on sites with AdSense.

Needless to say there is absolutely no incentive for AdSense to increase EPC since the site is not improving.

Come on Redbar! Your statement is ridiculous, if things are really that bad then cut your losses and go do something else. Sitting around doing nothing and hoping that things are going to improve is not a good strategy. The only way to stay afloat in this industry is to be continuously improving your site. Because if you are not making things better your competitors are and then they are stealing your users.

[EditorialGuy]

Sunday was spectacular for us, Monday was okay but nothing special.

Every day is different, so it makes more sense to look at monthly or even yearly patterns.

[netmeg]

Continuing to see those five, six, eight dollar clicks. if it weren't for the low CTR, this would be the best June ever. Clearly the inventory is there.

[Ironside]

@Red bar, basically you're saying you are earning around £1 a day. From how many websites are these earnings coming from? If it's just one website then how many hits are you getting according to Google analytics? Also, how many pages on your website have AdSense on them? If your website is very small and you're not getting very many visitors that it doesn't surprise me that your earnings are small. However, if you're getting let's say 500-1000 visitors each day then something is not right if you are not earning more than £1

[RedBar]

Sitting around doing nothing and hoping that things are going to improve is not a good strategy.

Bear in mind I am only referring to AdSense earnings, my websites are realworld business sites with real products sold globally, I am not complaining about my products simply the massive decline over the past few years in AdSense earnings.

@Ironside

I've gone from £200+ per day to £2.70 at the moment, it's simply been slash, slash, slash by G, take my experience as a serious warning as to what may, and probably will, happen to most sites unless you happen to be located at Mountain View with loads of venture capital.

[el_capitan]

Just got my arrows removed, anyone else?

[Ironside]

@Red Bar, you were earning £200 a day and now you're not even making £3?. I can empathise with this myself. Although my top earnings were nothing like yours. I was probably making up to about £35 a really good day but would expect at least £20 at an absolute minimum. This was over two years ago. Nowadays if I make £10 a day that is a really good day. At the moment I would say my average is probably about £6 with the occasional eight and quite a few below five. I don't know if you're like me and have found that a massive amount of people who visit our site do you save from a mobile device now. I am absolutely convinced this is one of the reasons why my earnings have declined so much. I think the amount of hits I get has declined slightly, that's obviously a factor to take into account. But the amount of hits I'm getting compared to 2 or three years ago has changed dramatically. I'm pretty sure this is where the decline comes into it. It's almost as if people's way of using the Internet has changed. Two years ago the majority of my money came from rectangular ads placed at the very end of my content, and also ads at the beginning of the content. But within a few months nobody seemed to be clicking on these ads any more, it was such a dramatic decline I just couldn't work out why it was happening, it almost seemed to happen overnight.

99% of the online advice regarding AdSense is completely redundant now. These heat maps showing where best to place AdSense are of little use in my opinion. The information is based on desktop to use whereas most people are using mobile devices now. Having said that it may be the case that your particular niche is more popular with people who may favour desktop computers over mobile devices. I can imagine that my niche will involve lots of mobile use, which I can see is absolutely the case when I look at the statistics. My niche is probably more popular to the younger generation of users who will all be fans of mobile phones.

Thing is, when you actually look at a website on a mobile phone the ads are very prominent and look really good, so why are people not clicking on them? I've got a banner (728 x 90) which is placed on the right-hand side next to the logo. It looks absolutely brilliant on a mobile device, it comes up as a rectangle directly underneath the logo. Yet in a whole month I think I've had one click on this particular ad. Most of the money has come from just viewing the ad. So it's probably worth leaving in place just for this one reason.

[RedBar]

What none of us know is why Google suddenly halves our click volume overnight. At the moment I am averaging 14 clicks a day, nothing less than 11, nothing more than 16. Earlier this year it was 30 a day, rarely less than 25, rarely more than 35, and yet again a year ago, 60, rarely less than 50, rarely more than 70, a few years ago 1,000 a day, rarely less than 900, rarely more than 1,100.

For me these sudden slashes have happened overnight, not a gradual decline to a new lower level, zap, this is your new lower level for whatever reason.

The first time I ever experienced this was 05/05/05, no need to wonder why I remember that date! Overnight a 50% reduction and I still have absolutely no idea why ... as it was in those days I was able to re-build my earnings to new and much higher levels YET I did absolutely nothing new nor different other than add more pages and images etc. Clearly at that time it was nothing to do with mobile or ad blockers therefore, quite simply, why were my earnings slashed, seemingly arbitrarily, overnight?

Will we ever know, will someone eventually spill the AdSense beans?