CPC drop -50%

[ivok]

I have noticed huge CPC drop over the past 2-3 days. Today is almost -60%.

Checked by country - seems this affects USA and Canada. Australia, UK , etc looks like normal.

Anyone experiencing such issues?

[MayankParmar]

Since last friday when I implemented DFP First Look for AdX, the earnings dropped by 40%. Is this just a coincidence?

[glitterball]

@keyplyr Where did you get that info about the AD Balancer from?

[keyplyr]

@glitterball - Bits & pieces from a half dozen sources including discussions here, Google groups, Google Dev, IBAS, GSC, Chrome Dev... it all comes together.

However, AFAIK there has not been a single *unified* official announcement from Google.

[NickMNS]

@Keyplyr to be clear, this is speculation on your part?

[keyplyr]

As I said, there has been no *unified* official announcement from Google that I'm aware of. There never is about future developments, but I wouldn't say it's speculation (although you may if you like.) It's an accumulation of the information available.

We'll wait and see won't we.

[csdude55]

Since last friday when I implemented DFP First Look for AdX, the earnings dropped by 40%. Is this just a coincidence?

Maybe. I think we all crashed hard in the last few weeks, and 40% isn't as bad as many.

[XauenSEO]

CPC is dropping in this month. We must wait until September :)

[tryingtogrowsite]

Can having too many adsense units be negative for CPC? I am thinking about increasing from two to three units. I want to boost CTR but feel introducing another unit could result in more lower paying ads sneaking in. I added the matched unit but opted to keep ads off. My goal with this unit is to boost page views, so its probably best to show related pages only in there. However, I want to add the third ad unit just above it, as actually recommended by google itself (not to me personally).

[csdude55]

Only real way to know is to test it for a few weeks and see how it works out. I had that same question a few years ago and the consensus was that it would not do well, but then I tried it and it improved my overall revenue by about 18%.

Testing over a few days isn't enough, you need at least a couple of weeks to see how it will affect things.

Since this isn't related to the Adsense hack, though, I'm going to send this to a moderator and suggest they move it to a new thread.

[martinibuster]

Just a reminder to please do not post specifics that lead directly to another site or to an advertiser, including screenshots of ads. Please don't link to blacklists or use this community to begin a blacklist.

Thanks!
;)

[Isa_Al]

anyone noticing any improvement? since couple days I am facing the same issue again. A lot of clicks and no revenue like a huge drop

[MayankParmar]

Same here. Things are getting worse

[Isa_Al]

@MayankParmar I usually get around 5k visitors a day. Before I was making a good amount of money, but now suddenly the revenue dropped. so far today 30 clicks and I made 0.5$ only. Before, even last week, 30 clicks would generate much more.

I feel the issue is back again since couple days, even worse than before

[motorhaven]

The issue is back again, and I've found a few advertisers who know how to get around the stylish addon in Chrome. Earnings went back up after filtering them out. Plus several new advertisers still caught by the add-on.

[Isa_Al]

@motorhaven Please can you explain how does that addon work or how to be able to filter such advertisers?

[LuckyD]

It the issue back? My CPC dropped to a two-year low!

[motorhaven]

@motorhaven Please can you explain how does that addon work or how to be able to filter such advertisers?

I already explained it earlier in this thread :)

[Isa_Al]

@LuckyD I think so. My earnings are even worse than last month when this topic was created. At a point the earnings got better but last week they became so low. For example on one of my sites 2 clicks in the morning and I earned one cent only!

@motorhaven I will check it out then. Thanks :)

[pmays]

Hi I am new here on WebmasterWorld, but earning with Adsense last 5 years. I really think about how can be CPC each year smaller and smaller from countries like US, CA, AUS or SWITZ. There is still bigger and bigger competition, but CPC is each year lower. How can this happen?

I added ADs format to my website before 3 days. The first day it was cool (average CPC on 728x90 was $0.5, 336x280 was $0.35). But for yesterday was 728x90 only $0.15 and 336x280 $0.1. CTR is still same. Only US, CA, DE, AUS traffic, travel website niche. How can this happen? I am running one local website in Ukraine and there is same CPC for these formats like for US traffic. How can this happen? It's kinda unstable. For me is now more profitable place link ad unit with same CPC and much bigger CTR...

[Isa_Al]

@pmays You are still lucky. My earnings recently are 0.05$ CPC which is insane. It's not even worth wasting time on my website working and I won't make anything at the end of the day.

I agree with you, I noticed that the prices are going down a lot. I used Adsense before, in 2010-2011, and the earnings were much much higher, not sure why the prices dropped now instead of increasing due to more competition. I don't think Google wants to earn less money as well, but there is something wrong going on

[EditorialGuy]

I really think about how can be CPC each year smaller and smaller from countries like US, CA, AUS or SWITZ. There is still bigger and bigger competition, but CPC is each year lower. How can this happen?

1) CPC isn't lower for everyone. It trends up for some, down for others. Never assume that one person's experience is universal.

2) Ad buying is a lot more sophisticated today than it was even a few years ago. Much of it is done by computer, making the process more efficient and cost-effective for large-scale advertisers.

[pmays]

EditorialGuy: Thanks for reply. Of course everybody has different results, but for example on this forum are many webmasters who are having the same problem as me.

Why should CPC grow in time:
1) More companies goes to online business -> bigger competition
2) Less targeting -> growing adblock trend getting lower impressions -> you have to pay more to be seen.
3) More ad formats -> companies can pay more for CPC because of bigger effectivity of ad sizes, mobile formats etc...

For me will be just weird if CPC stay steady. But it's quite weird that CPC is smaller than in 2010 for example, of course it's just my experience.

[motorhaven]

Pmays,

While there are more companies buying ads, there are also many more companies displaying them. Everyone has jumped into the game thinking they can make a lot of money publishing content and throwing Ad Sense ads on them. The effect is page view growth has gone up faster than the number of ads available, causing less pressure for pricing to go up.

Add into that mix the growing percentage of mobile ads which tend to earn less, and the overall result is some Ad Sense users see less income. But that's not everyone... my Ad Sense income has increased the past two years.

[EditorialGuy]

Not so many years ago, we had a rep firm for display ads. The company represented us and a number of much larger publishers in our sector. They sold ads the old-fashioned way, with reps going out to lunch with media buyers, doing RFPs, negotiating ad contracts, etc. Every so often, we'd get an e-mail saying something like "We can use all the impressions that you can supply about [topic] with CPMs of $20 or more." Now the industry has changed radically, and the rep firm is no longer in business.

Also, motorhaven makes a good point about mobile ads. If you want to raise your CPC, get rid of mobile ads. You might make less money overall, but at least you'll feel better about a worthless metric.

[NickMNS]

@EG

If you want to raise your CPC, get rid of mobile ads.

That is crazy talk. If comes to that then IMHO you should probably just give up all together.

My CPC's and earnings in general are low, similar to what I have experienced in early 2016. But there is one big difference, today my earnings from mobile are in line with the impressions from mobile. In the past most of my earnings were coming from desktop. This signals one of two things or a combination of both:
1- RPM for mobile has gone up
2- RPM for desktop has fallen

In my case it is combination of both, but Year to Year I have doubled the number of mobile impressions. So despite a drop in CPC and RPM compared to May and June I am still earning far more than the same period last year.

The key to success moving forward is going to be getting mobile user to engage with content and ads.

[EditorialGuy]

That is crazy talk. If comes to that then IMHO you should probably just give up all together.

Yes, just as worrying about CPC is crazy, or at least pointless. But for those who are obsessed with CPC, it's an easy way to make that worthless metric look better.

CPC is a useful metric for advertisers, because it represents their cost per lead.

For publishers, RPM is the metric of interest.

[pmays]

Mobile traffic on my websites is about 30%, so I have to use responsive ads with some fixed width/height where I need it. But actually, every ad on my website is responsive ad unit. Then in css I am changing preferred values for different devices.

[CommandDork]

So which of the RPM metrics is worth focusing on in the Adsense reports - "Page RPM" or "Impression RPM"? I see that they are nearly identical numbers but not quite, off by a few pennies between them.

[EditorialGuy]

This explanation seems pretty reasonable:

[quora.com...]

[NickMNS]

@CommandDork I explained the difference here: [webmasterworld.com...] (see page 9)