May 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Ironside]

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

[NickMNS]

@MayankParmar and @Nomis

Why is my balance is -0.19$ ? I'm worried. It is in negative, why? :(

This is very strange, I have a friend who is also seeing this -0.19$. To have a negative balance after being paid is very strange to begin with but that there are multiple instances with the exact same amount is very spurious.

Is anybody else seeing the -0.19$ balance?

Also ad-balancer is still not working for me, I am still seeing the maintenance message.

[azlinda]

My balance is -0.37. And I've never seen this before.

[csdude55]

Mine is also -0.98. I feel like I've seen that before, and the Performance Report still shows a total so I'm not panicking.

It looks like the last week of May was a bit of an improvement, so in the end May was better for me than April by about 10%. Still WAY below normal, and way below last May (which very similar traffic), but at least it wasn't worse than April!

[corphish]

Mine is -0.03$
Its the first time ever I have seen a negative balance, the deduction usually happens when the earnings are finalized, not sure what's going on this time.
And just after when I saw the negative balance, it all started going wrong (perhaps a coincidence).
USA, from where my max revenue comes, has been the disaster mainly. I would easily make a $ or 2 per day from US itself, but I doubt I could even make 1$ in the last week of May from US. Luckily, rest of the countries seemed to do decently, but not as terribly as US, but it was still not enough to get me past the threshold :(.
Hoping for better times (or rather normal times) ahead.

[Peter_S]

I did a A/B test during the last 10 days (desktop). Between a 300x600 slot and a 300x250 one. And surprisingly, the 300x250 generated twice more earnings than the 300x600. I say surprisingly because for some years, my 300x600 was by far my most performing ad slot.

May be 10 days is too short period, but I thought of sharing this experimentation.

I wonder if, with the rise of mobile devices, advertisers are focusing more on 300x250 creatives than larger ones. The compact aspect of 300x250 might also be more challenging for advertiser to promote themselves in a smart way. Some ads are also nice, with a stack, one static image, one title, one line description. I think it's a variant of text ads made for display ads.

[kindle44]

Hmmmm, mine is -$1.69

May is extremely good actually, with some days giving rise to my best performing days ever.

[Ironside]

@Peter_s where were the two placed on the desktop and the mobile? My 300 x 600 definitely outperforms all the other ads.

[Peter_S]

@Ironside my experimentation was only for desktop. the ad slot at the top of the right side bar.

[Ironside]

I've heard of the A/B test. Does that mean swaps each day? What did people see on a mobile device?

[Peter_S]

I don't know how others are A/B testing. But I would NOT do "A" one day and "B" the next day, because each day can have a different profile of visitors, and each day is different by itself. A Sunday, is not the same as a Monday.

I alternatively show "A" and "B" to visitors. This can be achieved server side, or it can be done client side in Javascript.

Basically in PHP this can be this:

if ( mt_rand ( 0 , 1 ) )
{
  // display A
}
else
{
  // display B
}

In Javascript, I think it could be something like that (to verify)

if(Math.random() < 0.5)
{
  // display A
}
else
{
  // display B
}

Instead of using random function, you can also use the parity of the current time (second)

[RedBar]

Have you AdSensers got any traffic today? I've almost been wiped out with some sites sitting on 0 PVs all day.

I keep looking and saying 17th May plus my implementation of https has killed all my sites EXCEPT one which is completely normal which then doesn't make sense to me, why would one site be unaffected?

[EditorialGuy]

We've got a June thread now, folks.