Huge 50%-70% drop in RPM & CPC since May 20

[janvitos]

Hi,

So we run a web site that has been doing perfectly fine since about 3 years or so.

But since May 20, our RPM and CPC has dropped 50%-70% compared to the same period last year, and it hasn't picked up since.


Our RPM has always been steady, even when comparing 2016 vs 2017, but it suddenly changed on May 20.

We don't have any policy violations and our account has always been in good standing.

We did not make any significant changes to our web site, and we've had steady increasing page views for the past months.

Honestly, there's nothing we can think of that could explain this enormous drop in RPM & CPC on ALL ad units, while CTR has remained steady.

All advice is welcome, thank you.

[edited by: not2easy at 3:52 am (utc) on Jul 7, 2017]
[edit reason] removed specifics [/edit]

[ember]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, janvitos. My standard answer to this kind of question is has your traffic changed? Not the amount but the quality. You say you've been increasing pageviews the past months, which seems to coincide with the drop in EPC. If the new traffic - maybe social media traffic or traffic from a new country, for example - is valid but not converting for advertisers, then Google will downgrade it and pay you less per click.

[janvitos]

Hi ember, thanks for the info.

I would need to do a bit of research first before answering the traffic quality questions, but my first guess is it shouldn't have changed since we use the same practices as we always did.

Most of our traffic comes from Social Media indeed, but it always has, so I would have a hard time seeing why the quality would've suddenly changed.

Looking quickly in Analytics, traffic still comes from the same 4 top countries, so there shouldn't be any quality issue there.

The only thing I can think of right now, is that in April, we had a pretty big boost in invalid clicks because of a new ad placement that we had integrated wrong. We usually have around 2% invalid clicks every month, but it jumped to 10% in April. Do you think they could have sacntionned us by lowering the CPC ? If so, how long do Google's sanctions last ? Do they have the habit of santionning people without letting them know first ?

Thank you.

[not2easy]

Many others are seeing similar changes over the past few months - not that that helps any. The July AdSense discussions are down somewhat due to the (US) summer/holidays but the June AdSense [webmasterworld.com] discussion has many similar observations and discussions of possible causes. It seems to be a drop that many are seeing recently so it does not appear to be sanctions or anything singling out your site(s) or account.

[janvitos]

Thanks for the answer not2easy.

I've been reading those threads and also what others have to say about their earnings dropping.

Though, I'm still a bit worried about the importance of the drop we're seeing. As a lot of people mention some drops in the recent months, I wonder if they're also seeing something between 50% and 70% drops. Those figures seem rather high to us as we've never seen anything like this before.

We emailed AdSense support and hope they'll be able to enlighten us on the matter somehow, but we've had little success in the past in getting "real" answers from them.

[janvitos]

I actually made a mistake, and it's CTR that has gone down, and NOT CPC.

CPC has actually increased since 2016.

If you look at these two graphics taken from our AdSense account, I think they look pretty terrifying.

First graphic is a comparison of January 1st 2017 to July 6th 2017 with the same period last year: [imgur.com...]

Second graphic is for CTR since January 1st 2017: [imgur.com...]

CTR is down more than 50% since May 17th. Does anyone recall anything special in May about some Google changes?

Thank you.

[netmeg]

What about your Active View Viewable?

[janvitos]

Active View Viewable has increased from same period last year by around 10%, from 55% to 65%.

[ember]

If it's a CTR drop it might be that Google has found something about your traffic that it doesn't like and is shaving clicks. What was okay before now isn't. Not very comforting, I know, but they are always tweaking how they detect and define invalid traffic.

[janvitos]

It feels exactly that way ember.

It feels as if they implemented some sort of blocking ony my site, but without issuing any warning of any kind.

In May we only had 4% invalid clicks, and that dropped to 2% in June.

If there is some kind of block, hopefully it will be removed soon enough.

Has anyone ever had any experience with their site being "click limited" by Google?

Thank you.

[NickMNS]

Others have reported that due to high invalid clicks that Adsense implemented a change on their accounts that when a user clicks on ads a pop-appears asking the user "are you sure you wanted to click" or something to that effect.

Also, your account may have been pushed into smart pricing, thus limiting the number of quality ads that appear, but typically this should negatively impact your cpc as well as your ctr.

Finally have you checked your coverage?

[janvitos]

Thanks for the info NickMNS.

I can confirm that I do not receive any pop-ups asking to click a second time, unless the pop-up is only shown sporadically, which is something I cannot extensively test.

As for "smart pricing", I've never heard of that, and I can assure you my CPC has been much higher in 2017 than it was in 2016. Have a look at this CPC graphic: [imgur.com...] - it looks pretty good to me.

Coverage has always been around 98%, and that hasn't changed at all recently.

Thank you.

[ember]

It could also be that you lost a major advertiser on May 20, one with a good CTR. Advertisers come and go all the time and it can hurt when a well-performing one leaves.

[janvitos]

ember, I hadn't thought about that, and it does make sense.

[janvitos]

I just happened to remember blocking many "bad bots" in May due to heavy bot traffic.

I know some bots are used for advertising purposes, could I have accidentally blocked a "good bot" that was analysing my site and somehow providing better ads to users?

Maybe that's a bit far fetched, but I will unblock all bots for a while and see what happens.