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!

[Ironside]

Blimey, I haven't even built the website in 2005, I don't think I put AdSense on any of my websites until around 2010. It seems you are having problems five years for I even started. However, within two years of me putting AdSense on my sites I was earning nearly £700 a month. Unfortunately it didn't last very long and we are where we are now.

Too many people trying to earn money and not enough advertisers willing to fund us with high paying clicks, that's my bets.

[koan]

Ironside, I think top ads on mobile devices may be ignored simply because people scroll down before it even has a chance to appear, especially with the new async ads.

[RedBar]

Oh dear, normal traffic and AdSense Pvs BUT:

2 clicks from India 0.09p
1 click from Bolivoa 0.04p

And that's my lot so far today, 13p, about 18 cents, I'm glad my life doesn't rely on an AdSense income! :-)

[Ironside]

I thought this was quite interesting. I've taken a screenshot of the same day going back to 2010. You can clearly see how mobile devices have evolved and now on my site in particular most people are using them over anything else.

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

[s205.photobucket.com]

I was looking around on plenty of fish last night and couldn't actually find any adverts that look like Google AdSense. So not sure whether they don't have them on the website any more. I'm willing to bet that even a big website like that that would have made millions of pounds a few years ago will have probably suffered like the most of us because if you think about it, most of the people who will be using dating websites will probably do so from a mobile device. I really don't think it makes the slightest bit of difference what the website is, they are all going to suffer if a lot of their traffic comes from mobile devices because it's just the nature of how people use a mobile phone to navigate the Internet and website.

[engine]

Thanks for the stats, Ironside.
It goes to show that what has been taking place with mobile was going on for some time.
I also find it interesting that desktop took a resurgence in 2015, although, that could be an aberration in the recording.

[EditorialGuy]

On our site, desktop traffic still rules, although mobile traffic has grown quite a bit. What's more interesting is that desktop AdSense revenue has grown by nearly a third (May, 2016 over May, 2015), outstripping desktop traffic growth significantly.

In our niche, desktop users are the people who attract advertisers, click ads, and generate affiliate revenue.

[RedBar]

The wheels have completely come off my wagon, so far today zero clicks and 10p earned from four cpm ads. With such a collapse it would take years to get to a minimum pay out therefore it looks as though G may get to keep June's "earnings".

[koan]

I love my phone for the apps, but browsing the web is a pain compared to desktop, I still don't get how mobile is replacing desktop traffic.

[RedBar]

I still don't get how mobile is replacing desktop traffic.

I empathise with what you are saying however only a few years ago people did, well where I live did, take laptops to the pub, then netbooks and now a mixture of tablets, phablets and smartphones. What is vastly different though is the different way the alternative devices are used compared to desktops and laptops.

The days of connecting to the unlimited knowledge device seems to have gone, most smartphones are not used for realworld purposes, they're used for trivia, news, sport and social stuff, keeping in genuine contact with families and friends around the world.

I have a 6" Lumia 1520, it is invaluable to me, so much so that I actually have a spare one just in case however I do not actually do any physical work on it, sure, loads and loads of business whatsapping etc, but for real work it's still a desktop or laptop choice, I sure as heck wouldn't want to build a website on one, however that 1520 is always by my side.

It's horses for courses, I run an international business covering all time zones, this phone actually allows me to do it efficiently and, most importantly easily, simply because it is so portable.

[breeks]

Vignette ads were doing decent - not anymore

have gone from near a buck a click to under 10 cents a click.

Guess the Vignette party is over :)

Delete code

[Ironside]

It's all about convenience and being able to access the Internet without having to be sitting at your desk. I am of the same opinion that I don't see how they can be more convenient using a mobile on the Internet than a large PC monitor. I've just got my iPhone connected up properly now with the contract so that I can check my website. I would absolutely hate it if I had to rely on this iPhone 6 to navigate through the Internet every day. It's just too small a screen to really enjoy the experience.

[RedBar]

My lowest-ever click day Wednesday however a single USA $3.50 click helped bring earnings up to the minimum. 1/2 the month gone, 2/3 the minimum earnings, will I get there? This is a game of cat and mouse now :-)

[Rasputin]

Ironside, I am very surprised a general info site would have such a low % of desktop users. I wonder if the desktop version of the site could have the 'too many ads' penalty? (the page I looked at had 3 quite large ads above the fold)

[Roman Abramovich]

Not had adsense on my sites for over a month now, I put replacement banners in place with a unique click ref so I could compare, and the sales are much more impressive than the junk amount adsense delivered after they made changes this year. It also feels nice not being so frustrated with how adsense makes you, some of you should give it a try, they are not the be all and end all.

[Ironside]

@Rasputin I am aware of the "three ad" limit, but surely I'm not going to get penalised because I have three ads above the fold? In the past Google have sent me warning emails if they were unhappy with something on my site, I have not received any emails about having too many ads above the fold. After all, all the information on the Internet seems to suggest that above the fold advertising is the best way to go. I don't think my ads would harm my users experience anyway. I have one 728 x 90 banner that is located just the rights of the logo. This is well above the menu. I've recently inserted a 336 x 280 unit just underneath the main heading and above the main bulk of content. And on a couple of pages I think I've got a responsive unit in the right-hand column. But there aren't many pages there I have three AdSense units above the fold, I think you are probably confusing one of the media.net ads with Google because they sometimes show Google adverts for some annoying reason.

If you think about it logically, the kind of people who are going to be visiting my site are going to be young outgoing folk. I'm very much doubt you are going to have professional or elderly people using my website on a regular basis. And we all know that the younger generation will probably be using their smartphones more than anything. Like everyone else I am trying to find a way around the huge decline in earnings that we have experienced lately. The more I think about it, the more I experiment the more I really think that mobile usage is to blame. I would love to know how some of the big gun websites are getting on with their AdSense revenue, Mashable, wiki how, plenty of fish, these sites earn hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, wonder if they have suffered like the rest of us. I think they must have, why wouldn't they? If it's a case of people not clicking on Google AdSense because they are looking at a tiny screen and they are just looking down quickly then these other websites are going to have the same problems we do. The only thing they got on their side as they have millions of hits every day. I do think about sending an email to one of them just to enquire, not to stick my nose into their financial affairs, but just to ask them if they have experienced the same problem.

What is quite odd is the 336 x 280 units I recently put back in place is quite an old unit, I created it a long time ago. Now it's displaying cyan coloured Nessie arrows which I believe is a cross between blue and green. None of my other Nessie arrows are blue, they are either dark grey or black. But when I look at other people's websites they have really nice blue Nessie arrows which I think is very appealing and people will click on them out of instinct.

[edited by: Ironside at 4:38 pm (utc) on Jun 16, 2016]

[netmeg]

surely I'm not going to get penalised because I have three ads above the fold?

Not by AdSense, but it could be problematic for your organic search results. Google periodically does go after sites with too many ads above the fold (see link below) However, if you haven't noticed any problems with your traffic, you're probably okay. For now, at least.

[searchengineland.com...]

[Rasputin]

The “too many ads' penalty refers to all ads, not just adsense.
I also noticed your ctr is higher on mobile than desktop, on most of the sample days you posted.

I should say, our own site certainly isn't plenty of fish but earns a pretty decent amount and rpm etc are completely unchanged when compared with 2015 and 2014. I guess the same applies to others here, but of course those with a decrease are more likely to post. Point is simply that the reported decreases aren't necessarily a problem with adsense, ad blindness etc but could be site related.

[Ironside]

I'm just looking back to one of my best months and it wasn't actually that long ago, thought it was. It was actually January 2014. I may just less than £700 in that month. I'm just looking at the channels that made the most money. I can see that a 160 x 600 skyscraper which if I remember rightly was placed in the left-hand column above the menu made the most money that month. Not far behind was a 336 x 280 unit which I had placed at the very end of all my articles. Third top earning unit was another 160 x 600 skyscraper unit. In fact, of all the units I was using it was the skyscrapers that seem to make the most money.

I recently swapped my menu from the left-hand side of the page the right-hand side. I've got nothing to lose, might just see what happens by changing everything back to how it was and maybe go back to using non-responsive units in the same place and see what happens. Obviously there must a reason why swapped in the first place, things did rather go off the boil. You never know, it may start working again for me.

[RedBar]

Hahaha, clicks have been halved again for me the last few days resulting in a massive 60p, 85 cents, in earnings yesterday ... wow, 1,000+ clicks a day to 5 or 6 with ridiculously low click values, way to go G.

[Ironside]

Best day this month yesterday, I was a few pence short of £xx. However, what was more exciting was I had commissioned sale £26 from eBay. What I like about eBay is apparently it works like this, if somebody clicks on a link on your website that takes them to eBay, even if they buy something completely unrelated to your website, as long as they've initially come to eBay from your site, you still get the commission. For me to get a commission of £26, the sale must have been in the hundreds. There's nothing on my website that cost that much, as far as I know anyway.

[TheWebGuru]

Okay, Everyone!

Big question for all the experts out there.

How is it possible to be on - track to earning nearly a months earnings within the first few hours of the day(my starting time here) then to check back the next day and I am back to square one ....again, heading towards the dismal low RPM, and earnings?

My Earnings due to CTR / Traffic / CPC was going through the roof for the first....around 3 or so hours....and was still going strong when I went to bed around 12:00pm....

Even at the very least, this should have finished up with "record daily earnings" .....yet, it has again crashed out!


I am now 100% convinced that our earnings have been capped, as far as Ad revenue is concerned.


Thankfully I have other income streams set up, or, in the process of being set up , both online and off line...

Though, I must admit I did place a very large amount(way too much) focus on Adsense Revenue.

[NickMNS]

How is it possible to be on - track to earning nearly a months earnings within the first few hours of the day(my starting time here) then to check back the next day and I am back to square one

I'm not sure I fully understand the details of your question, but here is an answer.

if you have a click at 10 minutes into the day, after only say 10 impressions, and it is worth say 0.50$ The CPC will be 0.50$ (obviously), the ctr will be a whopping 10%, and the rpm will be 0.05 per impression x 1000 impression = 50$. As the day progress these metrics should degrade progressively. If you get a cluster of clicks in a short time span again it can push these numbers up. This effect is even greater if you happen to get high value click early on in a day. The issue is that when Adsense reports these figures it resets them for the reporting period. So at 11:59 rpm for the day is calculated based on a full days worth of data, whereas at 00:01 it is based on only a minute. As a result it is perfectly normal to see your earning return to a value close to the period average, this is not a sign of an Adsense cap just a byproduct of how the metrics are calculated.

[robzilla]

Also, not all advertisers spread their daily budget over the 24 hours that are in a day, but may rush through it, so theoretically the competition among advertisers may wean as the day progresses. Anyway, I try not to check today's earnings until the day after, in an effort to protect myself from a daily emotional rollercoaster :-) It's pointless, the stats usually even out in the end; not unlike A/B tests where you need a certain amount of visitors for statistical significance.

[Ironside]

Surely there must be a massive amount of websites out there displaying AdSense from companies who have absolutely no idea what websites are showing their ads? For instance, I can go on any number of websites and see ads for host Gator, or other well-known companies. The fact that the niche doesn't have anything to do with a lot of what is being displayed on the AdSense makes me think that these large companies must have a massive daily budget. Having said that, I very much doubt they are paying much for each click or view. Take host Gator for instance, if they were to pay even 5p for each impression, their daily bill for AdSense alone would be astronomical.

[EditorialGuy]

Surely there must be a massive amount of websites out there displaying AdSense from companies who have absolutely no idea what websites are showing their ads?

There's nothing new about that. "Run of network" advertising and "remnant ads" have been around for a long, long time.

It's like anything else: If you're advertising on billboards, do you buy random billboards around the city, or do you pay a premium for one billboard that faces commuters who are arriving in downtown from the country-club district? The answer probably depends on what audience you need to reach and what you're selling.

[Ironside]

Advertising on a billboard in the high Street is probably the same as sticking random ads on any website I would think. I suppose if you want to pick your audience carefully then you would for instance advertise sporting goods on a billboard opposite a gym. I've just been having a look through Mashable and E how and the AdSense units they are showing have absolutely no relevance to the subject whatsoever. In fact I was seeing adverts for flybe. Now I would imagine that these ads are showing because I've use this website in the past to pick airline ticket.

Is any way to find out if somebody is using your website specifically to advertise their AdSense?

[NickMNS]

Surely there must be a massive amount of websites out there displaying AdSense from companies who have absolutely no idea what websites are showing their ads?

I think the one aspect that most are missing here is that relevance is not measured against website content, it is measured against the user's intent and surfing history. Even contextual ads, can be seen from the perspective of the user. The user visits a site about topic X, that is a pretty good signal that that user has interest in X.

As a publisher it is extremely difficult if not impossible to assess the degree to which ad relevance is accurate, as your interactions with a users will be limited to few pages views out of the users entire journey. This is not to mention, that there is no telling what aspect the advertiser decided to target the user by in the first place and as EditorialGuy mentioned remnant ads.

The only power we have as publishers is to increase the quality of our content such that advertisers are willing to pay more to advertise on our site to reach the audience that we are targeting. This will drive up cpc and probably price out most remnant and otherwise irrelevant ads.

[Ironside]

I think you're right, you're probably more likely to get business through appealing to someone's Internet history web browsing rather than matched content. Having said that, I seem to have the same websites follow me around 99% of the time whatever website I happened to be visiting, so actually I think that in many cases people will probably ignore a lot of the ads served up to them. Some of the best ads I've seen are on websites that have a DIY niche. I was visiting a website after reading about it and nearly every Google AdSense unit was based around DIY in the home. I can imagine people clicking on these ads as they were placed within the content and looks very appealing. It's no wonder this particular website was able to pay all its staff just through AdSense earnings.

[EditorialGuy]

I think you're right, you're probably more likely to get business through appealing to someone's Internet history web browsing rather than matched content.

Early adopters of AdSense (circa 2003) may remember when the New York Post was embarrassed by AdSense ads for refrigerators in a news story about a dead child who'd been stuffed in a fridge. Matching ads to content keywords obviously didn't work so well in that case.

[netmeg]

As I have always said, you'll never really understand how AdSense works unless you're keeping up with how AdWords works, and there's a LOT of moving parts to how AdWords works, targeting, placements and so on available to advertisers. And yes, they are able to see exactly where their ads are showing, and how much is spent per AdSense site, and whether or not traffic from that site converts for them.

And knowing what goes into it on the Advertiser side will help to understand the day to day of AdSense (and potentially diminish conspiracy theories, if you tend that way) I'm by no means saying it's a perfect system on either side, but at least you can kind of see why certain things happen the way they do.