September 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

Can we expect better for September?

[not2easy]

I'm not one of the AdSense power users, always considered it a sideline. I don't even look at stats every day. I have seen an increase over the past few weeks that does not fit with others' observations over August. Not an earthshaking increase but noticing that recent changes on my part seemed to improve earnings. I switched to a fixed size ad at the top of the sidebar that is 320 x 100 so the same ad can show for desktop and mobile. Near the top of the page on desktop and across the top of the footer in mobile. It earns better than what I had been doing which was to use different sizes with media queries. Am I the last one to notice this?

[Mentat]

The last week of august was promising compared to the rest of the year, even a nice surprise for such a month.

First day of September is a disaster for all fronts (traffic and payment).

[netmeg]

I don't have final numbers yet, but so far, August 2016 is the first month this year that was better than the corresponding month last year.

[kireb]

For the first time this year I'm in the plus. August 2016 saw a whopping 22% increase in earnings compared to 2015 (which was my best Adsense year ever). I had a record breaking US RPM. August is traditionally low season for me, but I am more than happy. The claw back stood at 1%.

September also start very impressive.

[ember]

August was good here, too. September is starting off slowly, but I chalk that up ANOTHER holiday weekend. I swear there weren't as many holidays when I had a regular 9 to 5 job.

[WhoKnows111]

It's ridiculous - after they halved my RPM in one day in November and hitting total low in May I'm working my ass off and improving month-on-month BUT

My clawback was always (for years) 0.5-3% ... and last month 8.3%, this month 12.3% ! Same traffic, same rankings

I would really love to know if adwords users wake up on September 2nd and see in their account this money. Or does it goes to G's piggy bank?

Luckily I'm not working my ass off solely for Cent(ad)sense anymore - it was 90% of my income in November, now about 25% and pushing it lower. But it still piss me off

[kodati]

I am from INDIA , My adsense earnings in September is disaster, Low CPC. CPC Come down between 2 to 4 , earlier it was 10 . can any one help to increase Adsense CPC.

[trebuchet]

If your traffic is also from India then that's probably why. RPM from India is appalling and has been for a long time. Indians essentially use my sites for free. Indians make up about 20% of PVs and about 1% of total earnings.

[NickMNS]

August was not as good as July.
Changes are based on the previous month (31 days)
Overall traffic increased by only 15% (from GA)
Page views increase by about 14%
clicks increased 16%
Revenue decreased by 8%

The mix of visitors by device was unchanged.

The revenue mix reverted back to June levels, with desktop accounting for 53% of revenue.

Conclusion:
Growth in new visitors continues, I thought that I might have been caused by an increase in traffic from the Olympics, but the traffic levels continue to grow. But the high RPM of July did not continue in August. I did note that RPM was low in the first half of August but seemed to recover in the second half.

[koan]

Trebuchet, one of my site had important traffic from India (like position #3, after US and UK) but lost more than half of that traffic in the beginning of the summer. I don' t know why, but I don't really care either, I saw no difference in my earnings, the RPM was so poor, it probably didn't cover the cost in bandwidth.

[robzilla]

August was the best month of the year for me. More traffic (from Bing), solid RPMs, and clawback below 1%.

September started off well, but it's already weekend now (and Labor Day apparently).

As for India: 5.2% of pageviews, 0.7% of revenue.

[trebuchet]

Those experiences seem consistent with mine then. Not that it really bothers me. I've never targeted Indian traffic and never hoped to make money from it, so what I do make is a bonus. I'm sure there are profitable Adsense niches for Indian traffic but I don't know what they are.

[netmeg]

I would really love to know if adwords users wake up on September 2nd and see in their account this money.

As an advertiser with half a dozen AdWords clients - we can see "invalid clicks" on a real time basis, if we enable that column in our dashboard, but it doesn't give us a revenue amount from them - just the number of clicks that have been deemed invalid. Every month all my AdWords clients have some credits for invalid activity, and, like AdSense invalid activity, it varies widely from client to client and from month to month.

My 2016 August took almost a 10% clawback this year; I expected it but maybe not that much which I think was the highest ever. But I know that on my sites, bot activity definitely was increased in August, and it probably wasn't just me. Seeing pretty much the same kind of thing in September so far.

It's looking like the bots are spoofing mobile user agents, and some of them even look like they're coming out of Google search. Hard to know for sure yet.

[RedBar]

Wow, a holiday weekend with yesterday beating my previous lowest AdSense PVs on Xmas Day 2016!

So far today from the US only 16.67% of average PVs and looking as though it may be my first-ever US zero click day.

[frankleeceo]

Month-end Clawback is much higher for me for August as well at 9.7%. I think my ~10% clawback is here to stay as I am tailoring much higher percentage of mobile users.

[Ironside]

September has started off really well, mind you, media.net is also paying now quite nicely now each day. I'll quite happily live with these results.

[EditorialGuy]

August was a pretty good month for us, and September is starting off even stronger (despite the U.S. Labor Day weekend). I don't expect it to last, though--we usually see a decline in traffic and revenue during the fall months because of our topics.

[magician]

Most of the image ads on my site are kind of black-and-white (and gray). Anyone else noticing similar ads?

August was a good month for me as well. It was the highest grossing month in the last 6 yrs for me. September has been average owning to the long weekend.

[romerome]

Google Analytics real time data seems to be down. Getting an "resource not available message". Is anyone else seeing this.

[eek2121]

Things are 'okay'. Definitely better than was the disaster of the last 2 months.

[Vader1206]

I had a 12% clawback last month which was kind of sad considering how pathetic my earnings have gotten.

[NickMNS]

@romerome this problem is being reported by many. Here is a post from SER with a work around, while Google fixes the problem
[seroundtable.com...]

[james_09]

Starting around the 15th August my earnings also increased and so far it has continued into September. Claw back was 1.5% for August.

[kodati]

since 1st September 2016 my adsense earning CPC is drastically changed. earlier it is 8 CPC now the CPC gone to 4 . any one noticed it? can any one explain the reason.

[romerome]

kodati.

I am seeing falling cpc number in the last week. click rate is up so its being offset.

Are other people seeing this?

I looked up some information based on seasonality. I found the below. Do other people think this is roughly accurate


"In summary, the best way to prepare for seasonality is to budget the following way:

Months with LOW spends, in very rough order of least to most: January, February, April, July
Months with AVERAGE spend, in no particular order: March, May, August, September
Months with HIGHEST spend, also in rough order of least to most: June, October, November, December"

[frankleeceo]

@romerome, I agree with that basic layout with seasonality. But here's how I prepare myself mentally every year.

if traffic stays equal. but most niches experience some form of traffic spikes during specific times, when matched with higher rpm plus higher traffic = much higher earning. people with event based sites will see the full power of this effect. example...black friday sites 1 week before black friday will probably enjoy 80% of its yearly gains.

1, 2 usually lowest of the year, 3 will tick slightly higher due to end of quarter

4 will dip again but fall in line somewhere between 2, 3

5, 6 stay consistent with 4 with 6 ticking higher again due to end of quarter and start of summer vacation planning

7, 8, 9 are wild cards depending on how visitors respond with summer vacations, if they have kids etc for back to school ads spend etc. it can be low or high depending on the actual audience.

10, 11, 12 traditionally much higher across the board. 12 although will get much higher rpm in the first half, but drops in the last week. overall earning of 12 will still be a little higher than 11 overall.

How I prepare? I save the hell out of my income from the fourth quarter, and somehow last through the year and do it all over again.

RPM for me for the month of september is pretty consistent, I do not see any significant dips nor gains.

[EditorialGuy]

Months with LOW spends, in very rough order of least to most: January, February, April, July
Months with AVERAGE spend, in no particular order: March, May, August, September
Months with HIGHEST spend, also in rough order of least to most: June, October, November, December"

It depends on your topic. For our site, traffic and booked revenues start climbing in January, reach a peak in summer, and decline from early fall until just before Christmas. This has been true for as long as I can remember (and I've been earning money as a Web publisher since the mid-1990s).

[nomis5]

In summary, the best way to prepare for seasonality is to budget the following way:

Different subjects produce very different results. My seasonality for one site is a guaranteed curve upwards from mid January, peaking for five months in April to August and slowly tailing off.

Another site I have is an exact mirror image of that curve.

[Ironside]

This month is going quite well so far. Yesterday was very good, page RPM = £4.11, impression RPM £1.45. Not quite sure why things have improved so dramatically, but let's hope it lasts.

[NickMNS]

I am seeing the same as you Ironside. This month is really looking good thus far.

That said, I am also seeing a lot of spammy ads (in the ad review center) of the type "[1] Pending Alert" tap here, or "You have one Message" tap here, or "You Have 1 Update". The ads are all similar but come from different adwords accounts and point to different spammy url's so they are nearly impossible to block. Once detected, they are blocked but then the damage is already done. I typically get about two or three a day this equals roughly 10 to 15 impressions. That in turns equates to a dozen or so annoyed users.

Is any one else seeing these?

I have started actively filing Adwords feedback reports when ever I come across them.