October 2016 AdSense Earnings & Observations

What has this month got in store for us?

[Ironside]

I might as well kick this month's thread of then.

Not a brilliant start to October, but it could be worse. Like I've said before, you just don't know where you stand these days with AdSense.

I don't even think there's any point in me making changes to my layout, I had a good September with my present layout.

[WMaster99]

At this point, I think Google knows exactly what is going on and they're not going to tell us. It's not even worth asking. There's nothing random about these fluctuations. It's deliberate. Either Google is experimenting or they have less ad inventory. I think the former is the most likely.

[Maximum44]

As we have blank ads coming up I think the less ad inventory is very plausible. Our CTR / CPC fluctuates a lot as well. You would think it would be somewhat stable. We have less control over the new text ads. I have been expementing with them. At this point it seems best just to leave everything like it is. No point in trying to optimze when there is huge fluctuations that seems to be beyond our control.

Saturday was not too bad for us. But it was not great either!

Anyway will play with DFP again and work with other advertisers and let adsense take whats left. We should at least get a better overall CPM rate on most, if not all, ad positions.

[stateofmind]

I definitely think there is less ad inventory available now. Seeing many empty slots as well. That being said, it seems Google is *also* experimenting at the same time; probably to try to make do with a diminishing ad inventory (and trying to improve quality for advertisers to want to spend more money)...

There is a lot of talk on YouTube (and various other sites) by those who make money from YouTube videos. Lately, Google has deemed a lot of their videos being "not advertiser-friendly". Google is desperate now, trying all kinds of things to keep their income in an increasingly difficult advertising market. But they are not getting it right. Downward spiral. Unfortunately.

My updated numbers:

September (9/1-9/29) = 100% of RPM
Jan-Aug (1/1-8/31) = 83% of RPM
10/1 = 53%
10/2 = 58%
10/3 = 53%
10/4 = 48%
10/5 = 44%
10/6 = 83%
10/7 = 94%
10/8 = 67%

[kindle44]

I'm sure this must have been discussed before but I have missed it. I've noticed a discrepancy between the Adsense Revenue given by Google Analytics and the Estimated Earnings on Google Adsense. The Adsense Revenue is always a lower and the gap seems to be widening. Even when I back-check previous days the discrepancy is there.

[NickMNS]

@kindle44 I believe it is because GA only reports revenue from clicks, as opposed to AdSense that reports clicks and impressions, and any other revenue.

[ember]

Google is desperate now, trying all kinds of things to keep their income in an increasingly difficult advertising market. But they are not getting it right. Downward spiral. Unfortunately.

I've been hearing that for years now.

[romerome]

This is just strange. Yesterday was horrible. Today is pretty good. My RPM looks like a seesaw.

I would lean to experiments vs less ad inventory. I don't see how ad inventory would change that much from one week to the next (barring usual seasonality). I would expect changes over 6 months or a year. Not from one day to the next.

[robzilla]

If it were an inventory thing, I was thinking more along the lines of the pressure to serve "better ads" [webmasterworld.com], and that the worst ads tend to perform the best. Fewer "bad ads" probably equals lower RPMs. However, my RPM, while also a seesaw, has been pretty good these past couple of days, so that doesn't quite rhyme with a good/bad ads theory, and there would probably have been an announcement anyway.

To (hopefully) wrap up my RPM list, relative to September 29:
- Sep 29 100%
- Sep 30 68%
- Oct 1 40%
- Oct 2 65%
- Oct 3 68%
- Oct 4 73%
- Oct 5 60%
- Oct 6 72%
- Oct 7 120%
- Oct 8 101%
- Oct 9 93%
- Oct 10 107% (so far)

[MrSavage]

I'm going to abbreviate my swearing here. Holy F S. It's entirely possible that I will be booted from Adsesne based on earnings. I don't check daily anymore, but the last 7 days totals are so far down, it's the first time I've actually been nervous about losing my account. As bad as it gets I still don't want to have my account closed. I've said it before but the last Adsense In Your City I was invited to. In other words I have done reasonably well in the past.

I have been adjusting what I do, what I spend money on and what I invest time on thanks to these increasing declines. However even this exceeds my worst expectations. The bright light here is that I'm not devastated by what I see because I have an exit strategy in place.

[Edge]

My competitors are getting the same poor targeting as I am. Anybody getting an update on what exactly is going on?

[jbayabas]

@mrsavage Why would you lose your account for earning poorly? Is there earning quotas with Adsense? I've never heard of that before.

[MrSavage]

They did some pruning of accounts a while ago. I'm being slightly alarmist on it, but if I feel I'm barely worth keep around at this pace, I wonder what they must think.

[Maximum44]

My earnings have been stuck since a few hours ago. Anyone notice the same thing?

[surnames]

Yep, stuck here, too

[Selen]

My recent theories about Adsense:

1. Adsense earnings go down until they reach a certain RPM level. The process, once started, may take several months.

2. Once the limit is set, the overall monthly earnings will always be in the +-20% range (usually 10%). More traffic will decrease CPC and/or CTR to keep the earnings at the pre-calculated level.

3. The monthly earning caps are applied to the whole Adsense account - that means, in theory, it's better for overall earnings to have 2 Adsense accounts and keep one site under one account and another in the second account because the cap level cannot be easily adjusted with one website only.

[JustForAdsense]

Earnings stuck here for sure for ATLEAST a couple hours now. Glad? to see i'm not the only one. Hmm

[billuk]

Stuck for me as well, getting on for 2 hours at least.

[WMaster99]

My earnings are also stuck. No movement at all for the past 2 and 1/2 hours (since about 5pm EST).

[RedBar]

Welcome to my AdSense world people ... Many thought I was "whining" the last couple of years however I could see the writing on the wall when Google, quite simply, STOLE, my unique images.

The worse AdSense performs, the better my RealWorld businesses do, thanks G, you are making me millions, literally :-)

[Ammalgam]

My earnings are stuck too...

[nubchai]

Also stuck here for several hours. Plenty of users on my sites. Has to be a reporting issue.

[stateofmind]

I should mention that in I am a heavy user of AdWords as well, and I have been for 10+ years. The number of clicks I get on my daily AdWords budget correlates with what I see in my AdSense account. A bad AdSense day means a good AdWords day. EPC goes down in AdSense = CPC goes down in AdWords and I get tons of more AdWords clicks. The "cheap days" clicks convert just as well the "expensive days" clicks.

So...as for the lack of inventory theories I am not sure, but logic dictates that there is less inventory now. However, as we all know AdWords is based on bidding. Those who bid more get more exposure, and those who bid below a certain threshold don't get any exposure at all. Being and AdWords publisher, one must carefully tune bidding and budget limits to get a fair "deal". This tuning must be done all the time. Too sloppy, and BANG: Your budget is gone in an hour, and you've paid far too much per conversion. Too stingy, and there's no action.

Now... this is just a guess, but I suspect that Google may be manipulating the "starting bid floor". Also, consider the fact that Google has acquired thousands of big and small advertising networks which now competes (bids) with the pure AdWords publishers. A number of things can/may have gone wrong in this system. Maybe.

But personally I think there is a lack of advertisers, Google manipulates the starting bid floor which indeed would've been catastrophically low if the market alone decided it in a situation where fill rates are well below 100%. And if Google set this floor too high, advertiser's budgets are either spent too fast, or the advertisers still left pull their ads. I certainly do pull mine sometimes, and then I wait for a couple of days before I restart my campaigns. If this is a normal thing to do, this could very well explain these extreme fluctuations in earnings (when ad inventory is low).

[Whatagreatdayitis]

I, too, use Adwords, and now that Adsense is actively promoting the use of CPC campaigns, I no longer fear the accusation of arbitrage. I think Adwords ads help to keep your website visible when the SERPs return bad results. I don't think ads help improve organic rankings. They shouldn't but they might. When I set the bid for clicks, I set it as low as possible in order to get the traffic, depending on the location, and then ratchet it up from there. But you get what you pay for. Low bids may result in your ads placed in locations where not much money can be made. I hope my ads are shown to people who have purchasing power. Ads that show up in Afghanistan might not yield the results you are looking for. But then you never know. I often get single clicks from an advertiser who is willing to pay four, five, six dollars for a click in some fairly poor countries. I assume, in those cases, that someone who clicks on my Adsense ad is some high-ranking government official or member of the oligarchy, and that's why the payout was so high.

So, yeah, I'm looking at this from both sides, too. I used to spend over $3000 a month on Adwords, but now it's a third of that as more traffic comes from social media and mobile devices. The value of mobile traffic is pretty low. I'm also not making as much through Adsense, so I've had to reduce my advertising budget.

It's good to hear from someone who uses Adwords. I've mentioned it in this forum as a means of improving earnings, but it doesn't seem as though there are many people here who do that. Why not?

[trebuchet]

Stuck here too. Well when I say "stuck", pages and earnings are going up and down every 10 minutes but staying within the same numerical range.

There is no 'cap' on Adsense. It just seems that way, particularly if you want to think ill of Google. All sites are going to hover around a -/+20% earnings range, based on the traffic they draw and the niche they operate in. In a market-based system earnings will always fluctuate from day to day. The guy with a snow cone stall will sell more on warmer days than cooler days; he might even put his prices up on hot days because demand is higher. Adsense works on similar principles.

[nubchai]

What's strange is I haven't seen a red bar all day.

[stateofmind]

@trebuchet: They guy with the snow cone stall has a choice: He can sell his stock at a loss (or give it away for free) when there is no demand, or keep a certain minimum price and wait for the right customer to come along. Same principle when you sell a house.

[ember]

Stuck here, too. Analytics is showing a lot more revenue for today than Adsense is.

[rashidjaved11]

My earnings and page views are not increasing. Adsense stats are stuck here too.

[trebuchet]

@stateofmind, hence the phrase "similar principles". It's not a perfect analogy because Adsense publishers are selling space rather than a product. The point is that ad prices and earnings will fluctuate with the market, the business cycle, consumer interests and the calendar. Publishers who complain about the volatility of Adsense earnings don't seem to appreciate all this.

Stats are still stuck. Perhaps someone can ask the Adsense people in their live stream that starts shortly.

[magician]

My earnings are also stuck and is fluctuating by +-$5.