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]

[taljanich]

Just was discussing all the stuff with colleagues.
One of ideas we have it's a Big Data Bang theory.
Simply AdWords, which is the biggest ad buyer in the world, has lost it's connection with some data providers, such as Bluekai, Nielsen, Krux etc. This caused ads misstargeting and as a result you can see some absolutely non relevant ads.
It's hard to believe, but it could happen.

The second idea is that Google is preparing some major updates for it's advertisibg system and simply sh#t happened during this update.

Let's not forget that advertising is the biggest Google revenue source and publishers, as an essence, is a very important thing in this ecosystem.
What I want to say: they will not restore our accounts balance for the past three days, but I'm sure they are working with the issue.

PS: Discovering Prebid.js at the moment, good time to start with headerbidding =)

[eboogyman]

taljanich -

Starting headerbidding as well. Should be fully implemented in a week or so. Will update with progress.

[Mentat]

It's a disaster. Tuesday was the best day of the week historically, for me.
Today was lower than Sunday!

[trebuchet]

Just woke up to the same as you guys. Ten hours left in the day and my current RPM is 20% lower than my record low daily RPM. It's a horror show.

Just had a click dump though! Eleven clicks yielding 88 cents.

[KaseyM]

Still lots of blank ads here.

[imgur.com...]

[Lame_Wolf]

On my site I am either seeing the alternative advert that I made, or blank spaces (where the advert is set to show a blank space instead of another advert.)

I've been with them 10+ years, and I don't break the rules.

[ember]

Even the remarketing ad that has been following me around my sites for weeks is gone. I miss it.

I've been trying to enter chat with support the last half an hour but no luck.

[deriklogov]

Anyone got response from Google Adsense Support ? I sent them request on Monday, still nothing

[neurropatic]

Great. So after it jumped back to normal rpm (check my latest post here) it dropped again and removed 30% of my todays earnings so the rpm is in deep #*$! again.

[trebuchet]

Remember that 88 cent click dump? Most of it just got wound back.

[KaseyM]

I would comment on the official Adsense forum but as always, it's just infested with posts from people with blogspot sites. The moderators on there are heroes.

[neurropatic]

Seems like there really is something happening with display and text ads. I never saw such dramatic drop in rpm for display ads. On the other side link units are working well. I noticed 20% increasein link units earnings today, but 60-80% drop in every display ad. In the end, if there would be no link units, I would probably end this day with $10 instead of $70!

[slobizman]

Ivok mentioned above that he thought it might be Google rolling out "Ad Balance." I went to Adsense to the Ad Balance page and I got a page (I guess I'm not allowed to post an image here, or I would) that says:

Ad balance is under maintenance

Your Ad balance settings have been reset and your revenue isn't affected.
Our engineers are working on it. Please check back again soon.

Well, my earnings as reported are certainly affected. The daily losses are HUGE. About 50% of a very large number.

[NickMNS]

@slobizman that message has appeared on the ad-balance page since mid-May. Ad-Balance is unlikely to be the cause of the problem.

[ember]

It would be nice to hear from pubpolicycomms about this issue. He might be able to give us some insights.

[slobizman]

@NickMNS Thanks so much. That's interesting how their engineers have been working on it for three months.

So, being new to this thread, am I correct that Google has not said one word anywhere about the earnings drop everyone is experiencing?

[nubchai]

Really bad day. Do we know if there's some problem they're working in? Or is this the pathetic new normal?

[HereWeGo123]

I too can confirm that we've seen a dramatic drop in CTR/CPC across the board beginning 8/6, yet our rankings and traffic remain strong. Reached out to AdSense support via chat and email, each time they have said that their engineers are investigating and they will get back to us one there is more information. And I quote, “We are not withholding any information from you, there is just nothing to report.” They also added that they have been contacted by many publishers regarding this issue. I asked them if they can say that this is a bug, and they said that things point that it may be but hard to say. They also said that they've seen this happen before. If everyone who is reporting this issue on here, including me is happy with rankings, traffic, what else can this be? Clearly, this is an issue with Google. I guess we all need patience, right? Google also ensured that if this is a glitch, or reporting bug, revenue will not be lost.

[Newhiphop]

I really want an answer asap. This needs to be fixed by tomorrow!

[nubchai]

Where I have backup ads, those are mostly displaying. One ad block where I don't have a backup ad is blank. The few adsense ads displaying are the ridiculous "Download Ads."

I think Adsense is not being truthful about a problem. I've never seen it quite this bad.

[HereWeGo123]

nubchai, so you've seen this similar issue occur before? How long did it last for and did the “lost” revenue revert back?

[nubchai]

@AZLinda I'm just catching up. Did Adsense add the 1/3 to your August earnings? I've never seen an amount that high stripped.

[nubchai]

@HereWeGo123 Adsense periodically has problems like this. No telling how long it will take to fix. I doubt they'll return any revenue here. They're either not serving ads or they're serving crappy ads. I've never seen this particular problem.

[nubchai]

Link ads are working

[soopablogga]

Made an account here just to post about this issue for others to see. My adsense earnings have entirely taken a dump. Starting the 5th, earnings have dropped daily by about 15%. Down to a total of 60% loss. I have a 8~ year old account and see many millions of pageviews a month from US/CA visitors. CTR has actually increased about 10%, while CPC has dropped a lot. On top of that, the fill "coverage" rate dropped to the low 80% range from being 99% daily. Double bad. And I'm also getting the crappy "download" and "ad blocker" ads.

Something similar happened back in April, for those who want to scan through that thread. HereWeGo123's post seems to indicate Google knows something is going on. We should all try and get a hold of our account rep if you have one and general support if not. If anyone finds out anything, a post in this thread would be greatly appreciated!

[azlinda]

@nubchai No, they just deducted it from the starting balance and that balance, sans the 30%, is what I'm owed for July. I've removed ALL link ads from my site. Hopefully that solves the problem.

[edited by: azlinda at 12:48 am (utc) on Aug 9, 2017]

[HereWeGo123]

@nubchai, the interesting part is that we are not seeing any blanks on our site and I am continuing to see the same ads that have always been served. Nothing out of the ordinary.

[nubchai]

@azlinda sorry to hear that. But how does removing the ad links solve the problem?

[HereWeGo123]

Can anybody recommend good alternatives to Google AdSense just in case? I'm thinking if AdSense doesn't get their act together within the next couple days or so, temporarily we'll need to put up other ads.

[nubchai]

@Herewego That's very interesting and weird.