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?

[NickMNS]

What amazes me is that this recent (short) boost in earnings seems to have impact many sites all at the same time. Did some big player suddenly enter the market and buy up all the inventory for a week?

[Ironside]

Yep, earnings dropped yesterday, today looks like it may be a fairly good one looking at what I have earned already. Because 95% of my visitors are from the states, it's not until the evening in the UK until things really start to get going. So if I have made a fiver by 5 o'clock in the evening in the UK, there's a good chance it could be a double-figure day. I think we are to just over four quid so far and it's just after 5 o'clock in the evening.

[ember]

It will take a long time to switch over to media.net

They were just bought by a Chinese company so they might be shifting focus at some point.

boost in earnings seems to have impact many sites all at the same time.

This usually happens to me. If I make changes to one site and it starts to improve in some area, then it often brings the same improvement to my other sites. A rep once told me that these things happen on an account level, not on a site level. Works in the opposite direction, too.

[NickMNS]

@ember, just to clarify, I was not referring to my own sites but rather to the experience of many people here in this thread.

That said,

things happen on an account level,

I agree

FYI there is Adsense hangout about policies that is going to start in 15 minutes.
here is the link: [events.withgoogle.com...]

[Ironside]

Media.net is doing quite well for me. I'm expecting a $140 payment any day, this month will probably exceed $150 quite easily. Does anybody know if they pay in US dollars? Last month my payment didn't quite match up to what I was expecting, in fact it was more than I was expecting if I compared the pound to the dollar

[NickMNS]

Wow that AdSense Hangout was a total waste of time...

Other than the fact that they confirmed that the 3 ads per pages no longer applies, but that is hardly news.

[Mentat]

Hmmm this Monday looks like a Sunday :(
Very bad payment and traffic.

The new text ads might not be so good.

[CommandDork]

"Wow that AdSense Hangout was a total waste of time... "

Yah - I use to try and make all of these but the last few years all they've covered is stuff that's already well-known. It was much more exciting 10 years ago when we were all learning the industry together. Now it just feels like they have to give their billion employees something to do.

[Ironside]

Yesterday was really rather good. Unless earnings really pick up today, it's not going to be very good. AdSense is as fickle as ever

[SnowLeppard]

Ads seem to be loading slower than ever. Stats are becoming more difficult to believe.

I finally had to install an Ad Blocker in Firefox (my one only blocks ads on Youtube) because Youtube had become unusable without one.

[trebuchet]

Wow that AdSense Hangout was a total waste of time...

Indeed. Not only was it full of 'old' information, it was clumsily presented and poorly explained. Google tends to leave these things to people with good tech skills but no presentation skills. They need to hire a decent PR person to front Adsense publisher relations.

I finally had to install an Ad Blocker in Firefox (my one only blocks ads on Youtube) because Youtube had become unusable without one.

In what respect did it become "unusable"? Was there a technical problem? Or you just couldn't wait for the ads to finish?

[ember]

it was clumsily presented

There was a time when screen presentations (movies, TV) were professionally done by people who knew about lighting, audio, composition, etc. Now anyone can throw up a video and most have no idea how to do it right.

[Peanut45]

Seeing a pretty decent recovery in earnings since Sep.12th, on the same amount of traffic.
CTR a bit wobbly but seems up by about 40-50% on average over previous value. Let's hope it sticks around for a while...

[breeks]

September 2016 AdSense Earnings and Observations

double ads, ugly text ads, 600x300 with ten microscopic text ads, junk ads, blank ads, "insert keyword here" ads and the occasional decent looking ad.

But the world's best reporting interface.

[RyuUK]

September has been my highest earning month of the year so quite happy. Traffic and click volumes have each improved, but RPM is way lower than Jan and Feb. This is a bit of motivation for me that AdSense is still worth gunning for as I was starting to get worried back in the summer. Hope others have seen improvements.

[super70s]

I think we should start discussing why there are such incredible and wacky fluctuations going on.

I think they purposely make sure you have a good day every now and then so you won't decide they're not worth the space and say the hell with them (even if there's no better alternative).

[gogs25]

Hi fellow webmasters..
Anyone else but me seeing huge CTR drop with CPC drop ?
After struggling for a year now to get decent rankings and promoting my site i finally succeeded and increase my traffic like 3x4x times, tier 1 traffic, i thought the hardest stage is behind but yesterday and today's stats SHOCKED me with -300% drop of CTR and 60% cpc drop and i am now earning the same amount like year before ( all my investments in promoting and creation are useless ) as i now getting bunch of visitors and don't earn anything...
I really don't know what to do now and where to go from this point ( contacting Adsense is almost always useless as you end of with talking with some student who doesn't know sh.i.t and serving you some usual client troubleshooting list, ) , i was following all rules,tos, everything... didn't get any message.

It seems to me big G is only one profiting from US ( adwords adsense ) serving us BS success stories and taking money from our work and always giving us pennies...
I regret all my investments now as it seems i invested only in google profit not my, all i got at the end is SHOCKING Adsense stats....

Hope anyone reads this as webmasters are dying because of google greed and always taking more...

[Ironside]

I finished off September extremely mediocre, certainly nothing to write home about. However, September's earnings have definitely exceeded the previous few months which is good. As for today, things are extremely slow getting off the mark. I have this feeling that October is going to be another one of those months where you really don't know where you stand. I think there are going to be some really good days making you think things are really going well, then all of a sudden you will be brought right back down to earth again.

[NickMNS]

@gogs25 welcome to WW.

i finally succeeded and increase my traffic like 3x4x times, tier 1 traffic

How did you achieve that?

[ww2015]

New units on desktop and tablet that are utter garbage - everything down 50% for the past two days

[gogs25]

I am at top of rankings (some even position 1) hundreds of keywords with my sites but its all useless when now i*m getting 10 times less cpc and ctr ... so all of my work and money invested is worth anything ..

[nubchai]

September was pretty good. The last 2 days did drop off.

[FourDegreez]

2nd half of September really picked up for me, some of the best earning days all year. CTR then took a dive this past Thurs. Today it's all awful so far. Checking my sites, it seems ads are randomly not loading--anyone else seeing this? It would certainly contribute to poor earnings.

[NickMNS]

@gogs25 what strategies did you use to get to the top of the rankings? Also how long have you been there? Have you made any significant changes to your site recently?

[FourDegreez]

Anyone know what this means? Inside the "ins" tag (responsive code), it nests several more ins tags, then an iframe which contains more scripts and another iframe. Inside that iframe is more scripts and *another* iframe. That iframe includes yet another iframe, which is just an empty document. The ad spot just ends up a blank rectangle. If this is what my users are seeing, it would explain today's low earnings.

This is a wide rectangle, btw. The wide skyscraper on the same page is showing an ad properly.

[gogs25]

I am 10 years and more in IT business, for sites i was working on past year,

i was providing content to users first for 365 days in a year, holidays and weekends , every day .. build quality low bounced site and spend $$$$ promoting first 6 months to get in top eventually..

and now earning like i did in start pennies, as it seems US search traffic in my hands isnt worth anything ...

[NickMNS]

Here are few points from my experience that may or may not help or apply to your situation.
1- If you have made any major changes in the not too distant past then this will likely impact the quality of the ads being served, and your earnings. This is because the adsense crawler will need to re-crawl your site to try and understand your content to better match ads. Depending on the size of you site it could take month before things get back to normal.

2- Not all traffic is the same, if you use tactics such as buying traffic using taboola and other similar services, this traffic may not convert/click on ads as much and Adsense may not serve the same quality ads to this traffic.

3- If you have or have had users clicking on ads but not engaging with the sites they land on in a "natural way" and this occurs frequently from traffic from your site Adsense may apply smart-pricing to your account. As I understand it, this where they limit the prevent good advertisers from bidding on you ad space, leaving you with crappy and spammy ads at a much lower CPC.

4- Bounce rate is an ambiguous metric. A low bounce rate may signal that users are not finding what they came for and are then required to click to other pages, ie bad user experience. It could also mean the exact opposite users love the content and want more. Be careful interpreting bounce rate.

I hope this helps. FWIW I have had the opposite experience from you during the month of September, I have seen my CPC and CTR increase.

[gogs25]

1. no changes done in past except adding new content as usual..

2. traffic is from google search engine mostly tier 1 traffic, USA UK and AU

3. for smartpricing they cant do anything they want and keep the revenue for them-self..

4.bounce rate was just to mention that visitors dont go away when they land and my site but surf threw site and spend 5-10 minutes on it...

[trebuchet]

yesterday and today's stats SHOCKED me with -300% drop of CTR and 60% cpc drop

If you're basing these complaints on two days' earnings then you should probably rethink your strategy. Adsense is a rollercoaster and conclusions cannot be drawn from individual days. I only form conclusions on monthly figures. Also, it's impossible for CTR to fall 300% unless you're somehow registering negative clicks.

I regret all my investments now as it seems i invested only in google profit not my, all i got at the end is SHOCKING Adsense stats....

It sounds from that like you started a website to make money from Adsense, rather than starting a website to produce good content. Not only that, you seem to expect an immediate return on investment. Both attitudes generally fail in the Adsense world. Most successful publishers concern themselves with content first and Adsense second. They also know that it takes many months, often some years, before sites make decent money. Impatience, a self-assumed right to earnings and not understanding the volatile nature of Adsense are pitfalls for newer publishers.

My advice would be to wait for a month or two and see how things play out. If your metrics and earnings are still down then you should probably have a third party look over your site to provide feedback on content, ad placement, etc.

[frankleeceo]

I saw some pretty drastic drop as well in September 30 / October 1 compared to the month of September. Roughly 30~40% in terms of CPM. Just a weather sort of thing I believe.

I hope it is because of the new quarter. Things should hopefully pick up sometime around mid next week. Fourth quarter is historically strong for my niche.

My September overall was pretty decent so no complaints there.