May 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Ironside]

Today has started off very well, 28 clicks and I'm already into double figures

[Teddy_core]

I thought last April was an exception in the history of Adsense but here is May and the situation is even worse than April and I think the next months will be worse than now. I even stopped improving my site and increasing my traffic since it costs me money and a big effort but in the other hand Adsense reduces my RPM when my traffic is increasing !

I still wonder why there are no real alternatives for Adsense ! what they are waiting for to show up? especially in these days where Adsesne is dying slowly and many publishers think seriously to leave it.

[Peter_S]

You can try Media.net, Chitika, Tabloola, Criteo, etc... as well as affiliate networks.

I still wonder why there are no real alternatives for Adsense ! what they are waiting for to show up? especially in these days where Adsesne is dying slowly and many publishers think seriously to leave it.

"Dying" is subjective. Publishers consider it's dying because lot are seeing their earnings decreasing over the time. But for an ad network to die, it would need advertisers to leave in mass. And adsense remains very powerfull way for advertisers to promote their business. There will be always more publishers joining, than leaving, and always more pages displaying adsense ads because in some people are producing pages in mass just for the purpose of monetizing them with adsense.

[Mentat]

Adsense for search is stronger each day.
Adsense for content is weaker each day. This alteady has an impact on the "free internet".
Less money for the small publisher => only big brands will survive and after a while, what we use "for free", will cost money - monthly access preferably!

[taljanich]

Hi everybody,

does someone can see the CPM decrease in last 2 days (05/08-09)?
For us it dropped down for 30%.

[iwrkalot]

April was a record for me. May is starting out better than that (up 28%). I am in season but the biggest difference has been the switch from fixed link ads to responsive. Those ad units are killing it for me right now.

I never hold my breath when this happens. I can't count how many times, at the end of the month, my wife blames me for the poor earnings :D

[csdude55]

No change at all here. I had a few days that had improved by about 10%, but it quickly went back down to the "new normal" :-(

You can try Media.net, Chitika, Tabloola, Criteo, etc... as well as affiliate networks.

I hadn't thought about it before, but the increase in competitors is a potential reason for my value going down. If 25% of Google's advertisers have moved to a different network, it stands to reason that our revenue would drop by 25%.

[Peter_S]

If 25% of Google's advertisers have moved to a different network, it stands to reason that our revenue would drop by 25%.

I would think that "real" advertisers, are part of all major networks. I doubt anyone is really leaving Adword/Adsense. This remains the biggest firepower to promote a business/service/product/etc...

I still think that for those seeing major drop of their earnings, it's because of the exponential multiplication of sites / pages in your niche. As I said the other day, if an advertiser had a budget of "100", in the past may be this budget was profiting to 3 sites, but now may be 100 sites are matching, which is spreading the money. You know, when money is involved, you have a rush of people who want a share of it, and the more people, the more the each share shrinks.

[csdude55]

I still think that for those seeing major drop of their earnings, it's because of the exponential multiplication of sites / pages in your niche.

In my case, though, there's not any competition. Except maybe Facebook. But that wouldn't explain a 35% drop from April 2 to April 4. My revenue chart literally looks like:

____
    \
     \
      \__________

[MayankParmar]

So far, it is better than April. However, the RPM dropped drastically today (10th May). Anybody else?

[csdude55]

Comparing yesterday to the day before (4/9 to 4/8), desktop was slightly higher (about 1%) but mobile and tablet were significantly lower (about 30%). So the overall RPM was lower (about 15%), but only because desktop made up for the difference.

[Ironside]

If only all my adsene followed a similar pattern

[s205.photobucket.com]

[Rasputin]

Ironside, having adsense both left and right of content and also above content, and all showing above the fold, is something of a risky strategy nowadays.

[Ironside]

@Rasputin the reason I have changed my AdSense to this layout is because according to Google analytics I get about 70% mobile traffic over desktop and tablet. If you check out my website on a mobile phone you will see that the top response of link unit will show just to URLs. You then get the heading of the page and then the 300 x 250 unit. The large 300 x 600 unit on the right-hand side of the page displays near the end of the document. If you're using a desktop or tablet then everything is above the fold, I can't see how Google could penalised me at all, after all, the diagram that they used to show the hotspots clearly shows where you should put AdSense units. Even on a mobile, my content still above the fold, albeit the heading of the page and not actually the written content, although the content heading is still part of the content.

[Rasputin]

I think your site looks fine but I was thinking of the 'above the fold' penalty that was introduced a few years ago, not sure what form it takes nowadays or whether it looks at desktop, tablet and mobile layout separately, just something to be aware if when ads cover a significant % of the layout.

[Runfun]

The discussion about above the fold and particularly for mobile layout is recently changed: [webmasterworld.com...]

To bad there aren't much responding there because the 300x250 above the fold works great for me. It's about 33% of my total earnings. Only problem is how Adsense is checking websites. Because every mobile browser or screen shows another part of the layout. Maybe it's better to leave comments in this thread about the 300x250 above the fold: [webmasterworld.com...]

[Ironside]

It seems that they are okay now with 300 x 250 units above the fold on mobile. If you think about it we are limited because screens on mobiles are very small so anything in the top layer of the first paragraph is going to push the content down slightly. However, like I said in my previous post the paragraph heading is part of the content so I don't see how they can be pedantic and say that because the bulk of the text can't be seen you are breaking the terms of service. In fact, I would go as far as to say that people will look at the paragraph heading 1st to see what the subject is all about.

The first day I implemented my new layout earnings were absolutely diabolical. Yesterday earnings were slightly more, today is is going to be a waiting game to see how things go. However, I have made my abs targetable so I'm hoping that some advertisers will see the 300 x 250 ad unit which is embedded in the first paragraph of text and take advantage of this position. Is there any way of finding out if somebody is actually paying for a certain ad?

[Teddy_core]

The second part of May has been started ... the result seems even worse than the result of second part of April... I expect only the worst from Adsesne in the coming days.

[Mr_Jefe]

@teddy_core
What have you done this month to optimize the user experience on your site?
What have you done this month to experiment with different ad implementation?

[Squarix9]

I'm having a good May, thanks in part to responsive link units. Like many of you, I always thought link units were losers - I hadn't touched them in years. But then the thread about responsive link units popped up, and it turns out you guys were right! I'd recommend everyone try links if they haven't already. They've made a drastic improvement on my earnings.

[koan]

I have indeed removed all the ad links units from my sites as it stopped making any adequate earnings around 2 years ago, it used to be actually decent, I figured visitors got burned out on these formats because of spam or the new majority of mobile visitors didn't care about them, I'm going to have to experiment again.

[Teddy_core]

@Mr_Jefe

Actually I didn't change anything in ad units or its places in my site... it was working well since last November until the end of March, before the beginning of Adsesne tragedy in April which is still continuing until this moment.

I'm using the ad units ( 970x90 - 970X250 - 300x600 - 720x90 - 468x60 ) I don't really feel changing any of it will give any positive results.

[westcoast]

My adsense revenue has absolutely plummeted over the past 2 months.

One thing I have been noticing is that under "Ad Balance", I have been able to shift it further and further left with each passing week.

Right now I get 100% income "showing 43% of ads".

That has got to indicate something is wrong, right? Does anyone know why a full 60% of impressions on my site would be earning $0? And why it went from 80% 2 months ago down to 43% today?

Please... any advice at all would be so helpful. I am totally at a loss as to what is going on, and why the # of ads on my site seem to be dropping off precipitously.

And a 2nd question: if you lower the "ad balance" slider down, will Google send impressions to your "alternate URL" for those above the threshold? Or does it ignore those and just serve a blank ad?

Thanks for your thoughts

[jbayabas]

I installed Adblock for the first time to test what it is all about. Is it really true that this is the main culprit of my diminishing revenue? HOLY #*$!. It's bad. Really bad. I can't believe how easy to use it. All my adsense ads are blocked! The only way that my sites are able to create such great content and provide it to my visitors at no cost is through advertisers. Now, this horrendous Adblock extension totally destroyed my livelihood. I feel so hopeless. So incredibly upsetting.

[Runfun]

Try to use a small popup for adblock users, I've placed a popup with the question to allow advertisement because the website depends on the revenue to make it available.

At the other hand I see a lot of complaining but things that really matter in my case are subjects there's not much attention for here at the board. For example:

300x250 banner above the fold for mobile devices

Using DFP to maximise revenue

Since I'm using both again since a week it all is back to the normal days.

[csdude55]

300x250 banner above the fold for mobile devices

Interesting to know, up until a few days ago this was against the rules. But that rule just changed a few days ago.

I created a new thread on this topic, it'll be interesting to see how it impacts everyone's revenue.

Using DFP to maximise revenue

DFP still eludes me. It seems overly complicated and confusing, so I've never taken any real effort to learn it. I would definitely be interested to hear what you did with it to improve your revenue... shoot, I'll sacrifice a chicken and dance naked around my monitor at this point!

[csdude55]

Is it really true that this is the main culprit of my diminishing revenue?

@jaybayabas, I don't know if it's a main culprit, but it certainly doesn't help.

On my end, I check to see if ad blockers are installed (there's an easy method, but I'm not sure if it should be posted publicly?), then if they are then I load a PHP script via Ajax that adds a counter to a MySQL database. That shows me how many pages are shown to people using ad blockers.

I currently lose about 30% of my potential revenue to ad blockers. It used to be closer to 50%, but then I added a pop-up to every 5th pageview for users with an ad blocker, asking them to turn it off, and the numbers went down some.

[Mentat]

Using Adx and a lot of custom minimum cpm based on visitors location, I had +25% increase yesterday.
Now guess what!? Today my ecpm droped by 25%.
The glass ceilling is very aggresive :(
There is no way to win!

[koan]

DFP is not confusing for the sake of it, it's just a more open ended tool for professionals. If you have other ad networks in addition to Adsense, in-house promotions, or direct campaigns with partners, it allows you to manage it all in one place. Google has free video tutorials and courses, but yes, it can be a bit non intuitive and complicated at times, it would be overkill for the average joe with a hobby site.

[Runfun]

DFP is discussed here: [webmasterworld.com...]

A benefit is also the ability to use floorprices for your ads. If the floorprice or more isn't served for Adsense it will passback to one of your other networks. I'm using it with Criteo but OpenX or Medianet would also work. Sometimes I've premium advertisers and I only have to upload the script in DFP.

[glitterball]

Starting on the 11th, Adsense has reported a huge increase in page views (it doubled), however this number does not correlate with the totals from my individual sites. The overall earnings have plummeted at the same time. Anyone else seeing this?

Adsense reports the increase as 'high-end mobile devices", but I can't see any other info about these phantom page views and adsense impressions are normal (i.e. correspond to the amount I would expect with my normal amount of page views).