December 2016 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[RedBar]

Here we go with traditionally my worst month of the year.

[Mr_Jefe]

I just looked and saw my adsense balance at the end of November was $99.90. That's an annoying figure.

It's like running a 5 mile marathon, and then fainting 5 feet from the finish line. :)

[NickMNS]

It's like running a 5 mile marathon, and then fainting 5 feet from the finish line.

I assume you mean a 5 min/mile marathon?

The difference being, that if you choose to run a marathon next month you wont be credited with completing the previous months race. Whereas you will only need to earn 0.10 cents in December to get the $99.90. But yes I feel your pain.

[robzilla]

At 5 min/mile you'd win many a marathon :-) Probably meant a 5 mile run.

Steadily meeting that payment threshold every month can be a good motivation, though.

[Mr_Jefe]

5 mile race is what I meant.

[NickMNS]

@robzilla yes! @5min/mile your getting pretty close to world record pace. @Mr_Jefe a marathon is 26.3 miles long.

And now back to the topic of this thread...
Yesterday was my worst day in a very long time. Traffic was normal, but low CPC and CTR. Is this the early arrival of the pre-X-mas drop-off described by others (in a different thread)

[RedBar]

Is this the early arrival of the pre-X-mas drop-off

I don't think anyone can give a definitive answer for that question since there are simply too many variables in too many industries however I have noticed during 2016 that Saturdays and Sundays, in general, seem to have been getting quieter in the "western" world, my Middle and Far East enquiries do not seem to be affected, as usual.

I have friends who are flat out with Xmas orders, then they'll be busy with the New Year and January sales, and then ... splat, nothing happens for them mostly until Easter and then off they go again.

I shipped my last Xmas consignments in October and November, nothing has been shipped for the past couple of weeks or so to avoid Xmas and New Year closedowns, Easter shipments are beginning this week.

Overall realworld trade is up, overall genuine enquiries are up however overall actual web traffic is down and getting quieter and, interestingly, we do not get anywhere near the "public" enquiries we used to now that we list trade and retail supplier directory links for various countries on our contact pages.

[NickMNS]

I checked my numbers this morning after posting the above, and I have already made more revenue this morning then all day yesterday. Things seem to be back to normal.

[GiovanniB]

Hello all, this is my first post here.
December was never our best month, one of the worst really, so this year to increase the earnings i decided to put some new banners, we didn't have update our site much the past years.
So i've put some new 300x250 sizes first on mobile in october, than in november a new 300x600 on the desktop.
The earnings with this new size rised up so fast that i didn't belive to my eyes but.. just the 1st of December we had a cut fall as we where before in october, just a little bit highier.
I'm posting on this thread because maybe someone is experiencing this behaviour too, we are located in Italy so the market can be different.
Digging inside the creative size report i've found that in this short time of huge incomeing the Dyamic creative is the one that rised up most, other sizes reised up less, but they did as well.

Thankyou all,

G.

Banners and rise
[dropbox.com...]

Dynamic creative
[dropbox.com...]

[Dimitri]

Hi G.

Personally, since a few years, my adsense stats are like roller coasters, and I gave up trying to figure a reason. I only look at the scale of a whole month,

[keyplyr]

Hi GiovanniB welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

[taljanich]

Hi GiovanniB,

When I saw your stats chart I thought you've just copied ours.
Absolutely the same picture as ours.
October +/-
November +++
December soon the same as October...

[Rusbellmadrigal]

Well... december no too bad. ++++ But last year was better.

[RedBar]

Unbelievably low traffic for me today across all sites except for my local UK hotel/pub site.

New algo or the Xmas effect already?

[edited by: martinibuster at 6:11 pm (utc) on Dec 15, 2016]
[edit reason] Removed off topic comment. [/edit]

[woody midrib]

For my main site, December is on track to be the first month where mobile RPM is higher than desktop RPM. Both numbers are up considerably from the lows I saw at the beginning of the year, but mobile RPM almost doubled in the last months. Amazing.

[RedBar]

As expected all my trade sites jumped off the cliff edge today, that'll more or less be it for me until 3rd/4th January and for some countries 9th January.

The Middle East and Asia will still keep visiting and making realword enquiries but as for AdSense, I'll be lucky to make a Dollar a day.

[breeks]

Nice 22$ plus click to start the day.
Must of been an Adwords newbie

[frankleeceo]

I am seeing higher and better RPM this couple of days.

[robzilla]

Traffic is a little slow compared to the first week of December, but RPM is surprisingly steady. Now if only I could get some of those two-figure clicks breeks is getting...

[taljanich]

Since Wednesday it looks like real December

[Dimitri]

For some reasons, my mobile traffic is no longer earning anything since December began. I mean, in November, I had good* adsense income from mobile traffic, and it stopped all of a sudden in December. Nothing has changed, my pages (reactive) are still showing as they should on mobile screen, ads, looks good too, as well as their position, but clicks and CPC collapsed. My desktop traffic is not affected.

When I look at the ad review center, all ads seems to be good and matching my site well, and the "quality" of my mobile traffic seems still good.


* "good" is relative, that's mobile traffic, it earns way less than desktop one :-)

[Mr_Jefe]

I think I have come to the point where I don't think my site is worth continuing actively with.
I've been working on it for 4 years, and the most it ever made via adsense in a single month is $155.27.

So far this month, it's only made $29. The revenue goal was to make it an authority site, then bank on direct ads.
That hasn't happened, partly due to lackluster execution on my part, and content theft.

Also, It has pretty much every adsense yardstick working against it.

- Primary traffic source is from a third-world country, so REALLY crappy RPM. I'm talking 50c - 90c on average.
- Site niche is generally at the bottom end of adsense CPC and RPM.
- Traffic is almost entirely mobile.

I'll probably just sell it, or keep it on a nearly auto-pilot basis, while I focus more on a site with local U.S. traffic.

It's somewhat futile to be in the US and focusing on a significantly less viable traffic/market.
It feels like being in the NFL, but insisting on playing in only little league games with the fifth graders.

Sorry for the rant. Now, what were we saying about December, again? :)

[RedBar]

Sorry for the rant. Now, what were we saying about December, again? :)

We're in the same boat!

Average click value today about 7 cents for me, very little AdSense traffic, realworld enquiries as expected.

Has The Internet/WWW lost its mojo or is it simply crazy Xmas?

Why do I ask that? I was at a "do" today and no one had a phone/tablet/etc in sight and all were thoroughly enjoying the "moment" :-)

[Mr_Jefe]

Average click value today about 7 cents for me, very little AdSense traffic, realworld enquiries as expected.

My average page RPM for the last 3 months has been $0.72. What a joke.

I don't think the internet has lost its mojo. I believe it's a combination of saturation and working on web properties in crappy niches (for Adsense).
That's why I've decided to switch focus to a more rewarding niche/target audience.

[Mentat]

1. In the last year, on weekend the CPM goes down the drain.
2. I think is the first year when I cannot see any holiday fever online or offline.
For sure, I cannot see any boom on shopping ads!

The Grinch stole the Christmas ads?

[RedBar]

Sunday saw my second lowest-ever AdSense PVs however today I have had in excess of USD 7 million in realworld enquiries.

Not one of these was from Europe or the USA.

So far today PVs are even lower than yesterday!

[Halaspike]

The fvck! My U.S CPC has dropped from $0.3 to $0.05 CTR now 1.5% from 2.5% wtf is happening :(

[frankleeceo]

See some pretty good drop today compared to yesterday too. ~20% RPM drop. Advertisers pulling out of holiday craze?

[MrSavage]

I could go check my previous parked page earnings from a couple years ago and I bet it's not far off from my earnings in Adsense right now.

[GiovanniB]

Yesterday and today are the worst in December by 2008!

CPC offer is way under standard this period.

G.

[robzilla]

See some pretty good drop today compared to yesterday too. ~20% RPM drop. Advertisers pulling out of holiday craze?

Looks like it. It's roughly 20-30% for me. It was stabler last year, when it only started to dive in January, but current RPM is still on par with what it was throughout December last year.