September 2017 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Peter_S]

Since no one dares to start the monthly sacrosanct* Kiss and Cry** Adsense topic,... have a nice month :)

* [dictionary.cambridge.org...]
** [en.wikipedia.org...]

[Play_Bach]

Been with AdSense since 2004. This is easily the worst month ever. I'm done.

[MayankParmar]

@deriklogov Yep it's down. Florida and Texas are down :'( But earning isn't, probably because the CPC is good when the clicks are fewer.

[Ironside]

Quite a good day yesterday, in fact the last two days have been quite good.

My clawback for last month was around £4. However, when I checked my account this morning they have given me nearly everything back. I would say that my estimated earnings matched my finalised earnings for last month. Thank you Google!

[MayankParmar]

Today is good too! :D

[RedBar]

PVs yesterday were back in the average range however earnings were well below average with a lot of very low value clicks. So far today earnings have matched yesterday to the penny but PVs are well down again making my CTR look incredible at almost 5%.

Just why has AdSense seemingly become so volatile since the beginning of August?

[nubchai]

Yesterday was and today is (so far) excellent. Let's hope it continues.

[MayankParmar]

Same, two good days so far! :D

[elman]

"Just why has AdSense seemingly become so volatile since the beginning of August?" : for testing the ad balance ?

[RedBar]

: for testing the ad balance ?

It was the end of May when G put it "under maintenance".

Are you suggesting that G have been "playing" with it for more than 3 months now and this has caused the volatility for some?

I do know one thing, I was looking at some of my sites today and the ad irrelevance was unbelievable, I don't think I've ever seen such bad targeting and garbage ... maybe it's simply a lack of inventory for my widgets yet the review centre would suggest otherwise?

[elman]

My earnings are balancing between 1 to 700%, I think that they're playing with the cursor to test different schemes. This ad balance seem to be critical

[NickMNS]

I'm seeing a new spat of unclickable spam ads. This time celebrity ads. I haven't had that many impressions but I have seen a bunch of different ad-units come through since this morning. Some are featuring Meryl Streep. I have blocked the destination domain and accounts, but I am already seeing new ones with essentially the same creatives.

: for testing the ad balance ?

I doubt this has anything to do with testing the ad-balancer feature. But bringing it back would sure go a long way in eliminating all the crappy ads I am seeing as of late.

[Dhillon]

I am happy some poster are having "good days" but what is your comparison period ?
A good day with same traffic compared to 2010-2012 or a good day in last few months ?

[MayankParmar]

A good day in last few months with +30% traffic.

Is CTR down for anyone else?

[jbayabas]

Tragic. Wow. How is it possible that September is worst than June. Unbelievable.

[azlinda]

Yes, CTR is pathetic!

[honestman]

Bottom has dropped out on CPC, RPM, clicks, etc. with same impressions during past few months. Not sure if, after 15 years, time to abandon ship. Have gone from 6 figures a year to low 5 figures a year on a site with a lot of traffic. Tried everything. Maybe time to make the site look prettier without the ads and rely on other affiliates. Mystery drops in income after years of consistency. I think they just don't want our sites anymore...

[Isa_Al]

@nubchai same here. Two days it was really amazing, but today it's not so good. I am getting a lot of clicks for 0.01$ or even less

[azlinda]

I also went from a 6-figure a year income to a low 5-figure a year income.

[NickMNS]

Over the past few days I have been hitting new records in terms of traffic but this has had little impact on earnings as my RPM remains low.

@Honestman I'm not sure a prettier site can make up for low earnings. It may be necessary just to stay afloat, but I doubt that you could increase your traffic sufficiently to make up for the drop in RPM. My rpm thus far in September is roughly 50% of what is was in June. You would need to double your PV's to make up the difference.

[Mentat]

Rpm is going down like a rock this week.
Another attack?
Google services had problems this week.

[MayankParmar]

AdSense wasn't part of those services though. It remained unaffected while Gmail, YouTube and all were down.

[Mentat]

Maybe, but this is the variation of my eCPM
1.2
1.17
1.1
1.06
0.42
0.37

This is a big, big problem, as my number of clicks is ~ stable.

[MayankParmar]

Things were going bad for me too... but I made some changes. I changed 320x250 bottom ad unit to 720x250 and this worked like a magic.

[Mentat]

I had 11 000 ad impressions for a site with flash games! Really?
The coverage was very good, too good to be real.

This site has AdSense as main monetization program!

[kireb]

September is the back-to-school month, so traditionally good. Im in the education niche. So far this September is record breaking, Highest RPM's Ive seen in 6 years. Breaking several records this week.

[nubchai]

@mayank is 720x250 a custom size you picked? I don't see that as a standard size ad.

[RedBar]

I also went from a 6-figure a year income to a low 5-figure a year income.

Yep, I've gone from 6 figures and believe it or not only this last week made it into 4, yes four, USD figures, it's going to be touch and go whether I actually make the monthly minimum of USD 100.00!

Google's stopped sending my global sites US traffic, I am now getting as much traffic from the UK which is ridiculous. G.com is definitely filtering out non-US sites and companies yet is prepared to include US sites and companies in the G.uk SERPs, and other G.tld SERPs as well.

Why the hell they think that anyone in India using G.in searching for an Indian widget product would want to buy from a US company that had imported it from India beats me.

Then again, that's probably why my traffic has fallen so dramatically, the average searcher has realised that G simply cannot give them anywhere near a decent SERPs for my widgets.

Bing/Ecosia results are fine and I tend to use Ecosia all the time now.

[honestman]

Deleted my comment, which I thought was quite tame.

[edited by: honestman at 4:04 pm (utc) on Sep 14, 2017]

[MayankParmar]

@nubchai Yep. This one:

<style type="text/css">
.new_BigResponsive { width: 300px; height: 250px; }
@media (min-width:300px) { .new_BigResponsive { width: 300px; height: 250px; } }
@media (min-width:480px) { .new_BigResponsive { width: 468px; height: 60px; } }
@media (min-width:720px) { .new_BigResponsive { width: 720px; height: 250px; } }
</style>
<ins class="adsbygoogle new_BigResponsive"
style="display:inline-block;"
data-ad-client="ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxx"
data-ad-slot="xxxxxxxxxxx"></ins>
<script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<script>(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});</script>

[NickMNS]

@honestman I was going to suggest that you switch off interest based ads in order to be served only contextual ads (based on your sites content). But when I checked into this in my account I realized that the settings have changed. It is now called personalized ads, and switching this off appears to only switch off the data gathering used for the ad serving and there is no telling what the ad serving will be based on when off. It certainly does not say that it will serve exclusively contextual ads. Do you have personalized ads switched on or off?