February 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Ironside]

Not sure if earnings are slow for everyone today, but mine have hardly got off the mark. It's only early afternoon in the US where the majority of my traffic comes from so hopefully things will look a bit more favourable tomorrow morning when I checked.

[nubchai]

Today was a dismal day. I'm hoping it was a combination of a U.S. holiday and also extremely warm temperatures. People were outside and not surfing the net.

[jbayabas]

Heartbreaking. I hope this is just a glitch. These low numbers can't be real.

[Dimitri]

Yes, yesterday was terrible for me too. (the third day this month, where there is more clicks than cents ?!)

[andymorris]

yet, still very low clicks and RPM this month, it's getting annoying

[Dimitri]

We had in a row, the election of Trump (it's unrelated, but who knows, it can have side effects somehow), Chirstmas/New Year, more of Trump, then Valentine's day, Winter vacation + President's day (USA). I wonder if this can all explain a decline in earnings since 2-3 months. (compared to previous years).

Also, when I turn on Google's chrome console, I often see error messages related to Adsense ads, often Javascript errors, like undefined variable, too many redirection, or network loop-back, depreciated function (which might be warning, and not real error) or things like that. I have no idea if it can impact adsense's earning/serving. (but sure it's not helping).

[Ironside]

Slight drop in earnings yesterday, not terrible though. I think February is going to be a bit of a down month, hopefully March will pick up.

[taljanich]

for us yesterday is the TOP1 worst Monday ever (CPC in AdSense/CPM in AdX)

[nubchai]

Just curious -- is everyone using responsive ads? I'm tempted to go back to non-responsive ads to see the effect on clicks.

[Ironside]

Nope, I don't use responsive ads any more. Nearly all of my ads are fixed sizes. Apart from a 336 x 280 rectangular add that I locate at the bottom of my articles, none of my ads are wider than 300 pixels. My 300 x 600 ad is by far the best earning ad I have. If you think about it, most people's mobile phones can accommodate a 300 pixel wide ad quite easily. The responsive ads are so small on a mobile device people just ignore them in my opinion

[andymorris]

I use one responsive on desktop but it always show the 300 px one and for mobile, no responsive, just fixed size

I tested responsive ads but always got tiny ads that no one clicked on

[nubchai]

Thanks Ironside & Andy. That's what I thought. I'll try non-responsive again.

[RedBar]

The responsive ads are so small on a mobile device people just ignore them in my opinion

Mine render perfectly on all the devices I've checked which includes probably about a couple of dozen phones and a dozen or so different tablets. My responsive adlinks are doing extremely well.

[Bobb11]

Last three days are bad. Low CTR, CPC and everything. I hope so it will go up in march.

[Rasputin]

If you use a 300*600 on a mobile it will almost certainly result in accidental clicks, which lead to smartpricing or 'click verification' (where users have to click again to confirm they really want to visit the ad site) or income being cancelled. IMO Responsive ads might earn less in the short term but are much safer in the long term...and look much better.

[Ironside]

I'd rather take my chance with the 300 x 600 ad units because responsive ads just don't work. I tried them for ages and earned hardly anything, just wasn't worth having them there.

[leebow]

Seeing a good day so far today!

Maybe advertisers are spending some of that budget saved yesterday from Presidents' Day.

[Dimitri]

Looks good today too.

[Pistoche]

Same here, so far today I'm getting the best CPC of the year. It is up 25% compared to the rest of February. Hope it is a sign of things to come.

As for me, I only use reponsive ads and they're performing decently, I'll do some testing with non-responsive at the end of the month and get back to y'all.

[taljanich]

We've made a few tests with responsive ads VS correct size ads. For us responsive ads is the best solution.
The only one thing to do is to choose the right ad <div> sizes depending on screen resolution.

[leebow]

I use "php mobile detect" to show 728 adsense on desktops - and fixed size 320 mobile ads on... mobiles.

The reason is - if a desktop user visits my site with a window scaled down - I don't want small ads being loaded - so when they maximise their screens, the ads are too small and potentially id be missing out on the highest paying (for me) 728 leaderboard ads.

If a desktop user resizes their window - they still get a full size website - and scrollbars - like the good old days. Who wants their webpages to keep shrinking to a mobile view on a desktop.

[Dimitri]

I am also using fixed size. As to find out if the page is being displayed on a mobile device, I am doing this in Javascript, testing the "screen.width" to decide which ad code to display (or not). Like that it doesn't rely on the user agent.

[RedBar]

Do we need to start a stats stuck thread?

There is no red bar however my metrics are way behind.

[cipi79]

I am using responsive ads in combination with @media queries. For different screen width I am applying different width and height for a div where responsive adsense code is. Best solution for me so far. Of course I am overriding adsbygoogle css class.

[EditorialGuy]

Do we need to start a stats stuck thread?

Reporting has seemed a bit more sluggish than usual lately, but I never put any faith in current-day stats anyway.

[Ironside]

Have you ever considered that it's just a case that nobody has clicked on any of your ads?

[jbayabas]

Reporting has seemed a bit more sluggish than usual lately, but I never put any faith in current-day stats anyway.

I hope you're right. You're giving me hope.

btw: is your site on SSL using https or just the usual http?

[RedBar]

Have you ever considered that it's just a case that nobody has clicked on any of your ads?

Nope, they were simply tardy in comparison to my own logs etc, they caught up eventually.

[EditorialGuy]

btw: is your site on SSL using https or just the usual http?

Our site with AdSense ads is http:.

[jbayabas]

Are you guys registering clicks today?

[Dimitri]

Stats seem fine here.