January 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[ivok]

Happy New Year !
I wish you have high CTR, CPC and RPM throughout the year!

Let's start the discussion about the January earnings :)

[sdksjdksjd]

Unbillable impression
AdSense records an unbillable impression for link units when the user doesn't go on to click any of the ads on the corresponding landing page.

[sdksjdksjd]

I have amount of unbillable same as amount of payable impressions. So, every second click on a text links is a waste.

[nubchai]

@Nick do you mean you have zero clicks for CPM bid types? I checked and I've had zero CPM clicks since Wednesday, which is also 4 days if you include today.

If you mean CPM impressions are zero then that is a problem.

I can't believe those unbillable numbers :(

[Maximum44]

@NickMNS That is some really low coverage. Something must be going on. I hope it gets resolved.

[NickMNS]

@nubchai

do you mean you have zero clicks for CPM bid types?

That wouldn't be so unsual.

I have zero impressions. here:
[imgur.com...]

Follow the green line.

[seaex]

@sdksjdksjd - Thanks for the info!

[CommandDork]

Checking two different accounts, CPM bid type clicks are showing normally for this month. One account's high traffic, one's low traffic

[nubchai]

@NickMNS wow your CPM bid impressions nose-dived. I hope support can help you!

[MrJefe]

Damn, my earnings have been halved over the last three days.

Page RPM at 50c today, and 48c yesterday.
My impressions are at the same range, so there isn't an issue with blank ads.

January has been crappy so far, with lower RPM, but I wasn't anticipating this low.

[NickMNS]

@MrJefe looks like your in the same boat as me. I finally managed to squeeze a few clicks in but ended at around 40c RPM. Did you check to see if you are getting CPM bid impressions?

To add insult to injury my traffic is raging. I'm getting loads of traffic from Australia that I don't usually get, specially not on a Saturday night. I guess there must be big sign up "Fire sale on my website free impressions on all night long!"

[riccarbi]

CPM / CPC ratio is not a problem on my side, maybe slightly better than usual, instead. What really has nose-dived is RPM, which is down 50% from the same period in 2017. Furthermore, I see a steep decrease of revenue and RPM (-60%) from the U.S. while those from Italy (my main website has versions in US-EN and Italian) are rather bad but not as much.

[MayankParmar]

High pageviews is only keeping me motivated, AdSense is depressing :(

And these Certified partners are totally useless.

[MrJefe]

@NickMNS
It's crazy, because my CTR and traffic haven't changed. If anything, traffic is about 10% up.
What nosedived was the CPC.

Since my site's CPC is abominably low to begin with, any slight change leads to significant swings.
For now, it's swinging in the wrong direction.

There are only 2 ads on my entire site. There used to be 3, but two months ago my Page RPM went to #*$!, so I removed one.
That instantly fixed the RPM to acceptable levels, until now.

It's a little higher today so far (91c), but if it creeps back down by tomorrow, I'll experiment with having a single ad and see.

[Cralamarre]

I just published a new article on my site, and sure enough, it took a few minutes before any ads starting appearing on the page. So it does seem like AdSense needed to crawl the page first. Fortunately, it took less than 5 minutes for the ads to appear.

[MayankParmar]

Fortunately, it took less than 5 minutes for the ads to appear.

It could take up to 1 hour as well!

[NickMNS]

Things are looking marginally better today than yesterday. My RPM is double (double of nothing). CPM impressions are still 0 though, and coverage is up a few points but basically the same.

[frankleeceo]

For some that has gotten a hit in terms of CPM, could this be a part of why? [adwords.googleblog.com...]

"All CPM campaigns are now viewable CPM campaigns ". It feels like this effect has seen full out within the last month or so.

I have been talking about view ability for a long time too.

[Ironside]

I took drastic action this evening and removed a load of ads leaving just one or two on each page, let's see what happens. I've left the ads that seem to earn the most and removed others that don't get a lot of attention. Maybe the CPC will now increase.

[Cralamarre]

@frankleeceo Isn't that article from two years ago?

[frankleeceo]

@Cralamarre

Yes it is. But I believe it is getting even more relevant than ever. When article /feature was first released, the "buy" side did not pay too much attention to it yet. At this time, multiple networks / platforms are pushing heavily for it and buy side is starting to taking this metric more and more seriously.

Most new features / metrics being pushed usually have a adaptation curve. And this is a metric that will stay.

Adsense observation wise, seeing another recovery in RPM today. Now sitting at +60% of this month's average, nearly double of this month's low. Still at -50% of last month, but at least it's in line with annual performances.

[NickMNS]

@frankleeceo

I agree that viewability is more relevant than ever but this isn't that. There is a specific category of bids called Active View CPM, and I am still getting impression for that category at the same level as always. It's not like all CPM bids have now revert to AV-CPM bids. I am subject to a some strange bug and appears limited to my account or a select few accounts. I hopefully that support will respond to my request on Monday.

[NickMNS]

@frankleeceo Actually I think you are completely right. The drop in CPM coincides exactly with my blocking of Third Party networks. According to your link AdWords doesn't bid in the CPM market only in the AV-CPM market. So that's why blocking 3rd parties set the CPM impression to zero and AV-CPM continues to get impressions, albeit very few.

This didn't register the first around...

All CPM campaigns are now viewable CPM campaigns

I will go to bed less dumb tonight....(come French expressions from around these parts)

[MrJefe]

This is a total outrage! I'm at 49c Page RPM right now.

I have just removed another ad, leaving only a link unit ad. Let's see how this plays out.

[Ironside]

Yesterday was one of the best days this month. Whether it was down to me reducing several of my ads I really don't know for sure. At the moment, I have earned around 17p for around five clicks and all the figures are pathetically low. However, since most of my traffic comes from the US things don't really get going until the afternoon. It will be interesting to see if today was as good as yesterday or whether it was just a fluke and in fact my new layout is not going to work.

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS It's amazing what you learn when everything goes wrong. :)

I had no idea either that all AdWords CPM bids were Active View. Of course, it's been like that for a couple of years now apparently, so Active View would not explain any recent drop in earnings.

My earnings today are terrible, but I'm chalking it up as a result of the US holiday, since traffic is also way down as expected.

[MayankParmar]

Google Confirms AdSense Earnings Drops, Blames Issue To Crawler Access [seroundtable.com...]

And still we have no real solution. In my case, AdSense craw bot is taking 10 minutes to 60 minutes for crawling the page, it could be more than 60 minutes. Crawl bot is slow unlike Google search bot.

[Cralamarre]

So they're calling it a crawler issue, but the real issue is the new policy that blocks ads on uncrawled pages.

[edited by: Cralamarre at 3:58 pm (utc) on Jan 15, 2018]

[nubchai]

The last two days have gotten slightly better but nowhere near back to normal.

[londrum]

So they're calling it a crawler issue, but the real issue is the new policy that blocks ads on uncrawled pages.

i remember a thread a couple of weeks ago that suggested google eventually stops following links on noindex-ed pages, even if you have the robots tag set as follow. if you couple that with this, then it almost makes it pointless to have no-indexed pages on your site because 1) they won't pass on any backlink juice if google don't follow the links, and 2) you'll have to find somewhere else to link to your other pages or they won't show any ads

[riccarbi]

This is a total outrage! I'm at 49c Page RPM right now.
I have just removed another ad, leaving only a link unit ad. Let's see how this plays out.

My humble suggestion: don't do it
To reduce the number of ad slots won't help you whatsoever with this issue. Since it reduces the "diversity" of your ad spaces available to advertiser, It could potentially hurt your residual revenue, instead.

I suggest you to keep calm, and leave everything as usual at least for a week or so.
My RPM had been abysmal in the first two weeks of January, but it seems now progressively returning to normality (even higher than normal in the last couple days, actually).