August 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

After a dry July, what will August hold?

[trebuchet]

I guess it's my turn to kick it off. July is gone and we're heading into the last month of summer (in the northern hemisphere). Will Adsense RPM recover in August - or is the downturn here to stay?

[eek2121]

For the past month my ads have all been showing the same exact ads. This has completely destroyed my RPM. My RPM last month was less than a dollar. In addition, I partner with a 3rd party and they fallback to AdSense from time to time. They are also showing duplicate ads. Thought about contacting support, but I doubt they can do anything about it.

[robzilla]

July was pretty good for me, best month since March, mostly due to increased RPMs and traffic in the last week. August is a little slow so far, but I know better than to judge earnings of the current day... or do I, 'cause here I am judging them!

[trebuchet]

July earnings now finalised. Clawback is 3.5% which is about average.

July 2016 vs July 2015
PVs up 20%
Impressions up 20%
Clicks down 24%
RPM down 31%
Earnings down 18%

[nubchai]

July was down a bit for me. Less than 1% clawback - normal lately. The first day of August was excellent, like the old days.

[NickMNS]

July was a record month for me:
Changes are based on the previous month (31 days) (may 31 to June 30 vs July 1 to 31)
Overall traffic increased by only 3% (from GA)
Page views increase by about 5%
clicks increased 18%
Revenue increased by 15%

The mix of visitors by device changed slightly down to 33% desktop 67% other. I think that this is due to having 5 weekends in the month plus the July 4th holiday. I tend to get far fewer desktop users on weekends.

The revenue mix changed considerably this month, desktop accounted for only 42% of revenue whereas in June it was 52%.

Conclusion:
Growth in new visitors is slowing, it may have peaked. But for the second month there has been an increase in revenue directly from Adsense, most notably improved revenue from mobile devices. I hope this continues.

[kindle44]

July was down despite a very good final week. For July vs June 2016 :
Earnings down 11%
PVs up 7%
Clicks up 20%
RPM down 18%
Clawback at 4.83% up 100%

[frankleeceo]

My clawback was higher than normal for July, at 8%. My average is about 3~5%.

July 2016 RPM up 5% vs July 2015.

[NickMNS]

My clawback was a little over 1%

[netmeg]

My clawback was a little over 2%, which is high for me. Overall my July AdSense was down over last year (about $7k lower) but my Facebook Audience, Media.net and Disqus easily made up for it and then some. So I'm down for AdSense, but up overall.

[trebuchet]

Two hours into today and I'm at 10,000+ PVs, just 40 clicks and $4.10 earned. The first hours of yesterday weren't much better. If this is August then it stinks.

[magician]

I noticed new kind of link ads yesterday from adsense. They had oval line around the links and when you hover on them they fill it with color (blue in my case). These link ads are gone today. Anyone else noticed them? Google might be testing them yesterday - though they were not very clean looking, I think they can have good CTR.

[nubchai]

Yes, I noticed the new link ads last week. They still appear on my sites. I like them because the colors on each site match the themes. And the links are very connected to each niche.

[ember]

Yep, had them yesterday and still do today.

[Selen]

Considering the fact that clawback is taking place on hourly basis at least, how are some of the webmasters able to calculate their clawback rate? Or maybe I don't understand how it works, but webmasters here have reported clicks being taken away on an hourly (sometimes every few minute) basis.

[netmeg]

There are clicks that get removed almost in real time (mine are usually within half an hour or so when it happens) and there are clicks that get removed at the end of the month when they tot up the earnings. When people are talking about the percentage, they are talking about the ones that happen at the end of the month. You'd have to sit there constantly refreshing the page to figure it out for the realtime clawbacks, and many of us actually have lives.

[Selen]

I see.. so the actual/real clawback rate could be 40-60%?

[trebuchet]

Between real time clawback and the clicks that don't get approved in the first place, I'd say it's closer to 400%, at least in my case. Google has never been so mean and stingy paying out on clicks.

US CTR rate today is a tick under 0.25%. I have never seen it this low before. But given the quality of ads around, it's perhaps not surprising.

[netmeg]

The actual clawback could be anything, and it probably varies widely from month to month, particularly during heavy ad-clicking-bot attacks. I try not to think about it, because there's nothing I can do about it (short of reducing my AdSense footprint, which I am doing)

[WhoKnows111]

I have never had so high clawback as in July too...

[EditorialGuy]

We had a strong July. August is slightly weaker than July so far (in terms of AdSense), possibly because so many people, including smaller advertisers, are on vacation. Affiliate revenue is on a roll, though, as it usually is at this time of year.

[EditorialGuy]

Up again (for the last few days and for the last week) after the aforementioned mini-lull. I guess the advertisers have stopped picnicking and gone back to bidding.

[breeks]

Seeing two 300x250 ads in a 330x600 ad unit. Looks quite nice. They have added some space between the ads. Last time I saw this set up the ads were butted together.

300x250 always seem to do well.

[EditorialGuy]

300x250 always seem to do well.

300 x 600 has worked much better for us, probably because that size is more effective for CPM display ads (which represent a bigger and more profitable piece of the pie than they did a few years ago).

Of course, 300 x 600 is best used sparingly.

[SnowLeppard]

Goodbye webmasterworld. Google crushed you too! Care to comment?

[trebuchet]

Goodbye webmasterworld. Google crushed you too!

Huh?

Not much to report earnings wise. RPM in the first two weeks of August has been down slightly. Hopefully it'll pick up in the second half of the month. Traffic is steady. Looking forward to the end of the US-European summer.

[nomis5]

Goodbye webmasterworld. Google crushed you too!

Seems like Google may have crushed you. But not so sure about WebmasterWorld.

Anyway, I'm not impressed with ads on mobile pages today. One of my sites is showing two ad slots per page, both serving the same ad. It has the title "27th November 2015 Black Friday Bargains".

[NeapTide]

Adsense is back to normal on one site while on other it is still in gutter. The niche of one site is education related while the other one is about Android apps. Second site gets most of the traffic from mobile sources. The average RPM on this site was 1.5 till first week of july which is now down to 1. I am seeing highly irrelevant ads on this site.

[CommandDork]

Out of curiosity, how often do you guys / gals make changes to your Adsense channels (names and descriptions)?

I think I'm a bit too overactive myself (about weekly) in that regard, as I always take a hit when I make the changes (I lose my bidding placements). Sometimes there is a good bump in earnings but it only lasts for a day or so : /

[frankleeceo]

Almost Never.

When I test, I make new channels instead of messing with them at all.