August 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[RedBar]

WooHoo ... Now my AdSense day starts at midnight UK time I logged-in to a pleasant surprise of PVs plus earnings this morning, I feel better already:-)

[edited by: martinibuster at 8:45 pm (utc) on Aug 2, 2017]

[MayankParmar]

When a publisher commits a mistake, the money is deducted and refunded back to the advertisers. Here when the advertiser tricked Google, the publisher won't get the compensation? Which kind of policy is this? They only care about the advertisers while on other hand they give #*$! to publishers.

[deriklogov]

@taljanich @blazinec Did you get any improvement on RPM after blocking those ads ?

[blazinec]

I saw improvents overnight somewhere. Since some of publishers I am working with buy traffic as well, it is clearly visible that text ads only can make positive ROI in few hours - but it is not rule of course. However it cant be seen on easy graphs provided in AdSense dashboard, since CTR is infected mostly in countries that make the most money... Overal CTR on image ads is much better because the thieves probably use these creatives only where it makes money - US CA etc and another counrtries tend to ,,create" normal CTR

[MayankParmar]

But text only ads pay less than the display ads?

[blazinec]

According to my experience not. If you have 10pct CTR on text, and 1 on image, there is nothing to talk about. Just try it and let us know

[Maximum44]

It depends how your site is built and how you have your ads placed. There is no one product fits all in Adsense. You have to try out several configurations to get optimal performance for your site.

[glitterball]

After returning to relative normal yesterday, earnings have dropped off again today. Anyone else?

[capulkit]

Hell with Adsense. Not moving above 0.04$ cpc with high authority site!
July was far better then August.

[blazinec]

Yes, today again, i am sure G did not come through all ads yet, this may take time and as russian blogs stated, it is not easy to detect. There are many ways how to obfuscate this kind of code in Javascript.

[elman]

Hello all,

What to do in the meantime? Toggle all ads in text mode?

[Ironside]

I have learned not to get too excited when you get a couple of days of good earnings. So far today is pretty miserable. However, it's still only 10 AM Eastern time in the USA so I don't think many people will be sitting on the computer until later on in the day.

[netmeg]

They only care about the advertisers while on other hand they give #*$! to publishers.

You can't be new to that.

What Google cares about:
Users
Advertisers

What Google doesn't care about:
Webmasters
Publishers
Your business

[trebuchet]

Google also cares about your content. Or, more specifically, finding new and clever ways of making your content Google's content.

After returning to relative normal yesterday, earnings have dropped off again today. Anyone else?

RPM average but clicks have faded away below 0.4%. Had some very big clicks in the first hour it's been very slow since then.

[NickMNS]

@blazinec thanks for bringing this forward. This is definitely the source of the problem. As was mentioned by Trebuchet we had already starting seeing this with the T*pster ads. And without knowing the specifics I had already speculated that that is what was going on. Adsense claims to have resolved the issue, but I think it may only be in scope, it seems that prevelance of such is diminished. As yesterday was much better and today is looking good as well. But after careful review of ads in the ad review I'm still seeing signs of the problem after the 8th. Most notably from a site m_a_r_k_l_e_p_e_s_t_dot_com / pest-control. I am seeing close to 100 impressions from various ad units all not clickable. I would recommend blocking the url.

Here is my CTR graph by ad type comparing August 8th (second Tuesday in August to July 11 (second Tuesday in July) and it clearly show exactly what was described, that is the drop in CTR impacted only image and rich media ads and text were not impacted.
[imgur.com...]

[trebuchet]

Most notably from a site m_a_r_k_l_e_p_e_s_t_dot_com / pest-control. I am seeing close to 100 impressions from various ad units all not clickable. I would recommend blocking the url.

This is one of the advertisers raising doubts as to motive. Why would a pest control company in Dallas, Texas, presumably with a localised market, see any benefit in flooding the network with unclickable ads? Surely they'd be better off with a well targeted Adwords campaign. I guess they could have been conned like Google.

[blazinec]

I suppose this is ongoing problem for near future, with much larger scale in GDN. My opinion is that such high CPCs could make mess in many (real) advertised campaigns, effectively rising their prices to a level where it is not profitable. Maybe nonsense, but maybe a reason why whole GDN thing smells last months (at least for me). I'll keep watching this forum, really interested in Google's statement and further performance of the network. For me this is unprofessional , as well as few another big sensations available in GDN that was not discovered yet :)

[MayankParmar]

AdWords is getting an update [searchenginejournal.com...]

However, it seems it has nothing to do with our issue or they haven't officially listed this. But as they announced it yesterday, may be there's a connection.

[edited by: MayankParmar at 6:32 pm (utc) on Aug 10, 2017]

[glitterball]

AdWords is getting an update [searchenginejournal.com...]

However, it seems it has nothing to do with our issue or they have no officially listed it. They announced it yesterday, may be there's a connection.

Wow, how far can this be pushed? Do ordinary users just not care about the organic results at all anymore?
Are organic results a thing of the past?

If you search for a popular keyword on Yahoo, all of the space on the page (on a laptop screen) is now filled by ads, in fact, you have to scroll down quite a bit to get to any organic results. Am I just a dinosaur who can't get my head around the idea that organic search is dead?

[Maximum44]

No dropoff here. Really good numbers. About the same as yesterday.

[MayankParmar]

Around 20% drop. Acceptable. Earnings have never been stable.

[HereWeGo123]

Did Google AdSense suddenly stop appearing on anyone's sites? I am noticing Google ADs are not appearing on our site as well as a number of other sites I am checking that I know are using Google AdSense

[taljanich]

@HereWeGo123

Me also.
At the moment it looks very strange:
Blank ads with AdSense.
No image ads at all.

[HereWeGo123]

I am continuing to check major sites that come to mind and their ads aren't appearing as well. Well Here's another issue in the making...

[Maleda]

@HereWeGo123 Same issue here?!

[HereWeGo123]

Ok, good news. I am seeing all these ads return again on our site as well as on a number of other sites. It appears that it was a 10-minute ad black out, but all appears fine.

[Maximum44]

Having issues now as well. No ads (or barely any) are being loaded. Native ads/recommended content gone as well. Sigh

[deriklogov]

Yes, Same here, all ads return again
but in mean time i notice and sites that was using custom search (when you get ads related to search) was visible.
so maybe they just fixing this stuff with click/hack
I am very surprised that they did not fixed it before while no one was concerned about it

[netmeg]

This is one of the advertisers raising doubts as to motive. Why would a pest control company in Dallas, Texas, presumably with a localised market, see any benefit in flooding the network with unclickable ads? Surely they'd be better off with a well targeted Adwords campaign. I guess they could have been conned like Google.

Could well have been hacked. Happens a lot.

[Maximum44]

Back here as well, phew :D

[Maximum44]

Well, the pest control company really had a visible phone number and url on their ad. Who knows. Maybe they wanted everyone to see their phone number :D