July 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[RedBar]

Here come the holidays to mess things up ... for some of us.

[Boxing_Fan]

when you review an ad, it shows the Ad Words account or network distributing that particular ad and gives you the option to block that ad network or Ad Words client.

[trebuchet]

The waaat-dot-fun ads are all over the GDN at the moment. There's some chat on Twitter about them appearing on sites like National Geographic and looking horribly out of place.

That particular address redirects to tupster-dot-com. A bit of sleuthing shows that it's a junk media site, also running Adsense, hosted in Germany. It's only been around since early July. Looks like this mob is hitting Adwords hard to land an audience. From the look of their fairly mediocre content and design, it's going to fail.

I have blocked the account. Hopefully the trash storm will pass soon.

[ember]

Block Adwords accounts by going to Ad Review Center. Then click on an ad and then at the bottom left where it says Block, click on the little arrow. It will say Block this Adwords Account. Click on that pop up.

If people are starting to talk about these ad other places than here, Google should jump on them fairly quickly. They must be the reason behind my sudden drop in epc.

[edited by: ember at 6:49 pm (utc) on Jul 28, 2017]

[MayankParmar]

@NickMNS Nope, I didn't block them.

[MayankParmar]

The day is over and the CPC dropped slightly. CTR was down and the earning dropped :(

[blazinec]

Really interested if one account hacking GDN could do such armageddon in RPM for tons of publishers... i ll check it as well and send an update later

[RedBar]

I went in blocked half a dozen of their ads and now having my best day of the past couple of weeks.

Methinks I'll have a busy Saturday afternoon checking-out a few more ads.

[Ironside]

It looks like today might be a good day. It still only 5:30 PM & 6:30 PM eastern and central American time which is where most of my revenue comes from. So I have still got a good six hours.

Looks like one of my responsive units is doing the business today. Is there any way to find out which one is earning the money for me? I got on my channel, although I do have one unit on several articles

[koan]

It does appear that some advertisers are trying to get traffic without paying, they promote an easy to type shortcut domain that redirect to the real one and actually prevent users from clicking the ad.

[azlinda]

The better question is, why does Google accept deceptive advertising like this?

[trebuchet]

Not only that, the product is garbage. It's a month-old Buzzfeed clone, peeling stuff from elsewhere and clumsily loading it onto their own Adsense site. And through fair means or foul they're flooding the GDN with ads for this rubbish. Surely alarm bells rang at G, one way or the other.

[Ironside]

Friday was my best day this month, in fact my first double-digit day for a while. I'm definitely relying on those above-average clicks on my responsive unit that is placed between the heading and the first paragraph of text. Even though they don't get as many clicks as the other ads, they certainly seem to pay more. It's probably because users don't have to scroll before they see them.

What I don't understand is why Google bother putting their own ads on people's websites. I understand that because nobody else is bidding for these places, you just get a load of rubbish in its place. However, people aren't going to click on them so what's the point? Surely Google are better off putting something there that with at least earn a little bit of money?

[nubchai]

@Ironside what size responsive ad are you using between the heading and first paragraph? I might try that.

I went through and blocked all of the bogus ads I could find. I was amazed at the number of ads I found. I noticed two days ago that my CTR and revenue dropped. Thanks to whoever identified the problem. I also don't understand how this got by Google.

[NickMNS]

@nubchai this is not a new problem or even an isolated incident, this is an ongoing problem. The spammy ads change but the general tactic remains the same. The only way I have found to combat this is with the ad-balancer, or by having sufficient market demand for your ad space that the spammers are priced, and I doubt most people fall into the second category.

[blazinec]

Would not solve this problem in future to block certain, evidently dangerous categories using viral facebook style? I understand they may achieve extreme ctr even on GDN (as they are mastering social viral) and possibly near-to-tero CPCs (or zero when hacking HTML5 ads) - I suppose IT tech blog will not suffer from lower demand caused by these ads (as only stupid would click on that).

[nubchai]

@Nick I know the spammy ads are an ongoing battle. I'm constantly blocking the "Download" and "PDF" ads. But those are clickable and these new ads evidently are not. It's one more way to make a bad experience for my readers.

[Ironside]

@nubchai because they are responsive they will even show up as a 728 x 90 banner, or a 970 x 90 on a desktop or large tablet. I would probably say that 728 x 90 banner show more than the larger size. But I have got quite a few of them throughout my articles because most of my traffic comes from mobile use. It's a mobile they appear to show as a 300 x 250. Occasionally I may see a small mobile size banner, but not very often.

[vegasrick]

The easiest way to get rid of these guys is to do what I did, block their Ad Words account, which blocks every ad they try to pump on Adsense regardless of size or price = problem solved

[MayankParmar]

The month is almost over. A drop of 20% in earnings compared to June while view is up by 30%. Hoping for a better result in August.

[trebuchet]

Six hours into today and I've got a stunning CTR of 0.18%. A testament to the utter rubbish appearing on my sites.

[Ironside]

I notice that "in feed ads" and "in article ads" have appeared in my account. Has anyone tried them and if so, have you noticed any difference in earnings?

At the moment I'm using the standard responsive units in between paragraphs. Really can't see what the difference is between the two.

[GlobalRM]

I believe it would be useful when discussing monthly Adsense stats if people would state the niche/topic of their sites. It would give us further insight.
@trebuchet you mentioned a CTR of 0.18% but what is your niche/topic? My CPC has been crazy low the past 10 days but my CTR has been good at 2.53%. My blogs are all to do with dogs.

[MayankParmar]

My CTR looks down today. CPC is very low too. RPM is awful. Earning is disgusting. Having a bad weekend! :(

[Ironside]

I have just implemented one of the in-article units on one of my articles just to see what it looks like. I must say I am extremely impressed. I particularly like the way the ad looks on a mobile, I think you will definitely get more attention. I think I'm going to replace a few of my old responsive units and see what happens.

[MayankParmar]

In-article ads look exactly like display ads. It sometimes shows a big display ad on my site. Didn't work properly the last time I tried.

[MayankParmar]

Sunday is over. Pathetic day. Had the highest page views this month on Sunday but the earning was awful.

[RedBar]

Sunday is over.

How? I am only halfway through an AdSense day.

Are you measuring from your Indian midnight to midnight since that isn't the way AdSense does?

[Ironside]

I am in the UK and my AdSense period is 24 hours, 8 AM to 8 AM the next morning

We've got one more day of July, I think I'm going to be about 16% higher than last month which is quite encouraging.

[nomis5]

I am in the UK and my AdSense period is 24 hours, 8 AM to 8 AM the next morning

Are you sure? I thought it was midnight to midnight in the UK? I'm up every morning at around 6.30 am and when I check Adsense it has certainly turned to a new day. I may just last to midnight tonight, if I do I'll check.

It would be interesting if we are both correct. Wonder why you would have one daily accounting period and me another?

[Ironside]

Absolutely positive, the estimated earnings figure only goes back to 0 at 8 AM UK time