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 :)

[kelsheikh]

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

Totally agree. There is no crawler access issue. No one is getting any errors in their Crawler Access report or else we wouldn't be here questioning it. They decided to launch that update without crawling pages beforehand. They could have started gathering data on URLs well before they made the switch to this new update. This update seems like it was thought out with the advertisers in mind 100%, but not the publishers.

If they do finally index a page, I hope it stays in their cache for a very long time. There shouldn't be any instances where a url is left with blank ads again, especially when the URL probably has plenty of advertisers in that category that could be placed on it. There are probably millions of URLs out there that get maybe 1-2 visits a month. If they delete a cached index at a certain time period and have to reindex those types of URLs. There may never be ads on them.

[MayankParmar]

There may never be ads on them.

Earnings should be still stable then, it might drop slightly tho :/

Leaving only a link unit ad. Let's see how this plays out.

Not a good idea. Even if you CPC goes up by 10-20%, it's likely that your CTR will drop by 30-40%. You will be in loss :D

[NickMNS]

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

Stop propagating the BS - Marketing Land first reported this and it is false, then Barry SER just repeated what Marketing land said. This was what AdSense Support was claiming the issue was since day one. The statement was included in the first support email, but obviously this is not the case. Can we please end this here.

The real issue is that since the implementation of the "Brand Safety" update ads are not being displayed on some sites (for reasons already outline in this and other threads) and those sites have no issue with crawler access.

[Ironside]

I can't work out how AdSense works. I was registering 11 clicks with the CPC of around 10p. I think the earnings were around 95p. I just checked again and I've still got 11 clicks but the CPC has risen to 18p and earnings have gone up to £1.90

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS, I'm not sure what was wrong with my comment, as it was only meant to point out that the issue is not, as AdSense Support claims, a crawler issue. The issue is the new "Brand Safety" policy which is preventing ads from appearing on sites like yours.

[sdksjdksjd]

It reminds me of those geniuses from tech supports, asking "Did you switch the power button ON?" when your gadget went down by sudden with no warning.

[Cralamarre]

Here's a general question... Let's say a page has two ads above the fold, with a banner along the very top and a 320x250 unit in the sidebar on the right, which is pretty typical. Since the ads are effectively competing with each other for attention, would that affect the CPM bidding prices? What I mean is, would an advertiser bid less for a CPM knowing that another ad may be stealing the spotlight? Or do advertisers not actually know where their ad will appear on the page?

[frankleeceo]

The banner along the very top will sometimes get hit because people scroll right past it. The 320x250 has a better chance of being trigger active view for desktop uses.

A better placement for leaderboard unit right below the site title / page title, it has slightly higher chance of triggering view ability metric.

Having two ad slots in those locations do not usually hinder another in my tests in terms of competing price. (useability and ad density issues aside). Which is my reasoning behind more ads you load up, the more money you get, generally. Again (useability and ad density issues aside).

ATF is correlated to higher earning because I believe ATF usually has higher viewability metric, not because it's an ATF itself. That's my opinion.

[NickMNS]

@Cralamarre my comments were not directed at you specifically, despite quoting you. It had more to do with londrum's comments.

As for ad placements. I don't think it makes a difference in terms of CPM bids specifically. I know that AdSense has a system in place where the bid prices are adjusted based on the ad placements. It is explained here: [support.google.com...]

[MrJefe]

@riccarbi and @mayankparmar

Reducing the number of ads on my site has helped significantly before, so there's no harm trying it.

Last year, my Page RPM tanked to this extent for almost two months. I removed one of the 3 ads I had on the page, and it instantly went back to normal.
Not only did it go back to normal, it delivered two consecutive months with highest revenues of the last 5 years.

Also, I used to have 3 on each content page, and tried an additional one on the homepage.
This caused a drop in overall Page RPM. Once I discarded it, my RPM went back to normal.

This time around, it's a little different because there'll be much less variety (running a single ad unit).
Even though my link unit is the highest earner, this move alienates other ad formats. Either way, if you don't experiment you'll never know.

[MayankParmar]

Today starts with $11 RPM and 0.30$ CPC. Already crossed yesterday's earning :D

[dolcevita]

CPC is a bit better $24 comparing with previously days in January ( $18 -$20).And if i compare it with last years where CPC was between $28-$33 then is easy come behind that my earnings are down +/- 30%.

I read about fill rate issue but isn't fill rate depend on Ad balance?I run right now experiment with Ad balance. 71% with 99% earnings VS 94% with 100% earnings and you can see direct difference in fill rate by the first one and the last one.

January is usually worse month of the year for Adsense, advertisers, earnings etc.. and it will be probably better by the end of month and begin of February.

[Maximum44]

$24 CPC? Is your page drug and weapons related? :D

[Cralamarre]

Just published a new article on my site, and this time it only took a minute or so for ads to appear. So it seems like things are improving.

[MayankParmar]

@Cralamarre Nope. Published a article and it's been two hours but no ads.

Some can see the ad and some can't. I'm not seeing the ads from India, while my friends from the UK can see the ads. What kind of joke is this, Google? :/

[Ironside]

I don't think Google allow weapons or drugs do they? If an advertiser is willing to pay $24 CPC then the product or service is obviously extremely expensive itself. I heard once that somebody showing AdSense for engagement rings was getting £50 per click.

@dolcevita if indeed you are getting these huge amounts for every click that I don't think you got anything to worry about, even if it does drop from $33 down to $24. Blimey, I'm happy with mine gets above 20p. You must be advertising Rolls Royces or something to get that amount of money per click.

[Maximum44]

It was a joke. But it does seem a lot. I do understand the ocassional big value click. But keeping it that high in the long run is a real achievement. But who knows there are tailored websites out there that go for a certain type of high value keyword.

[edited by: Maximum44 at 1:27 pm (utc) on Jan 16, 2018]

[Cralamarre]

@Ironside, for CPC's that high, it can only be one thing... Apple products. :)

[Maximum44]

lol @Cralamarre

[NickMNS]

It certainly isn't for Google Pixel's otherwise I would be a millionaire.

[dolcevita]

Oopppsss... Guys i forget to add 0. in front of numbers above...Lol.... :)

[Cralamarre]

Sure, give the rest of us hope and then take it away.

[Ironside]

I see, $.33, now your more in my ballpark figure. Having said that, today has started out pretty rubbish with my CPC 7p. I removed a load of ads a couple of days ago and had a pretty good day, well, good for this month anyway. Now it seems to have gone back down again. I added a 336 x 280 ad unit into some of the pages but it doesn't seem to have made much difference, earnings are still pathetically low.

[Maximum44]

A good cpc for us is $0.22-ish. Lately it has been around $0.16. I would be happy with a $0.24 cpc :D

[sdksjdksjd]

Every day something questionable happens about AdSense.
Total became less 25% on stats reload. RPM accordingly.

[MayankParmar]

If there's a policy change, it should apply to all sites, right? Why only select sites are affected despite being in same niche?

This thing is being handled badly by Google.

@sdksjdksjd Have you tried changing placement? It helped me.

[sdksjdksjd]

Another stats reload - another 25% less ... )))
omg ....

[sdksjdksjd]

@MayankParmar
"it should apply to all sites" - exactly, but it doesn't. I checked archive of popular media. News articles from 2008 perfectly show ads.
"Have you tried changing placement?"
I removed all links ads. Once the biggest earner, they appeared to be click wasters nowadays. According to "unbillable" stats every second click was a waste.
Replaced them by one 320x100 ad. For sure it's not worse.

[Ironside]

The link unit still works quite well for me. However, the responsive unit I have under the first paragraph of text, and also placed with in my articles does make more money with less clicks. So far this month I've had 100 clicks on the responsive unit and 198 clicks on the ad link unit. I'm £1 ahead on the responsive unit

[Cralamarre]

Earnings have definitely picked up over the past couple of hours, with RPM nearly double what it was earlier this morning. Good sign.