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 :)

[RedBar]

I'm a Piscean too! Along with loads of others:-)

"a friend" and "he" said to me that a more important change in GA algorithm is coming in March,

Of course there will be, it's Google's intentions for everyone with white hat sites to have to "pay to play" meanwhile spammy, keyword-stuffed black hat sites are allowed to rule the roost with impunity.

The SERPs in my sector are basically horrible with only maybe 25-30% of results shown being worthwhile however that's good for me since I am invariably in that 25-30% selection therefore my enquiries and realworld orders have actually increased meanwhile my AdSense just manages to make the minimum with such a current low EPC.

[NickMNS]

The Better Ads Standard mostly impact implementation, so it all depends on how your ads are placed on the page. There are other ad creative aspects such auto play ads and other such annoyances but I think AdSense has that covered. I would say that if you're conservative with your ads and use only AdSense there is not much to worry about. But those using multiple ad networks and employing things like stickies, exit ads and other overlays, they are in real trouble. Blocking will occur on the site level. So even if your AdSense ads are fine, they will be blocked along with everything else.

This is going to have a big impact.

This is discussed here at length:
[webmasterworld.com...]

If you look at the last post by Keyplyr he is stating that the first impact will be only after 30 days so in March. Maybe this is what Papux is referring to?

[Cralamarre]

Thanks @NickMNS. I use only AdSense on my site and I'm pretty conservative with them, so I'll hopefully be okay. If no one has complained about my ads in 11 years, I doubt anyone's going to start now.

My only worry, and maybe I'm worrying over nothing, is that some of these problem ads, like auto-play ads with sounds, will be served by AdSense, and next thing I know, I'll be told by AdSense that they've disabled my account for displaying their own ads. I can't afford to spend all my time tracking down and blocking ads.

[NeapTide]

@Cralamarre why the heck would they disable your account for displaying auto-playing ad videos which are coming through AdSense?

[Cralamarre]

Well, as I understand it, AdSense not only displays its own AdWords ads but also many third party ads. AdWords may not pose a problem, but what about all the third-party networks? Is there not a risk of some of them running ads that would be blocked by Chrome?

[frankleeceo]

The Better Ads Standard implementation is really run by the others arms of Google, and not adsense itself. The adsense team is helping to bring awareness so that adsense publishers will not trip over that. Other than that, adsense team itself does not really have more information than what you would find from the chrome / search side of things. For things like this, referencing things by going straight to the source (chrome / search), is better than going to adsense IMO. This is really whole site feature / organics that we're talking about. (We should actually know more about it as publishers than any advertising networks (adsense included), since it only impacts us, and not them directly).

Adsense is usually much better at prohibiting the problematic ads against the new standard than some of the other networks, but things do slip through. But there's usually a degree of error when it comes to the filter hammer. In short, strict adsense should not trigger it. (it should be noted that i had a site that continuously had problem ads served through adsense in certain ad sizes, I think my site was targeted by certain trouble advertisers, I eventually stopped serving that size altogether to please my users, but it was still a -30% earning for that decision, which I don't regret). The problematic ads were auto-play auto anchor video ads that will automatically jump to and freeze users until the video finishes. It was horror for me when I was actually able to experience it on my site, once I have gotten multiple complaints (No wonder the pay was good). I have gotten no more complaints once I stopped serving that particular ad size .

The chrome block sounds and appears to be a site-wide filter, and it should not generally be applied unless you use codes / implementations that go outright against it. (think pop up / unders / or density issue). So again adsense with proper implementation should generally be fine, even with third party networks, unless you were like me being targeted by malicious networks. And a reviewer happens to recreate it during their visit ;p. As far as I can tell, the reviewers go by what they actually see on site during their visits, and not what codes are served.

I thought the timing was around february the last time I read? But I guess it all depends on how far along they are with the review process.

[rokramne]

@nubchai

You see the difference: I have "Allow: /" which means allow all, and you have "Disallow: /" which means disallow everything.

[MayankParmar]

I'm a bit worried about the 30% density thing. I'm pretty sure some of my pages have this issue, I think I should ask Adpushup to fix it before it's too late :/

[Cralamarre]

Just to be clear, the 30% ad density rule states "When ads on a mobile page take up more than 30% of the vertical height of the main content portion of the page, the result is a disruptive ad experience".

However, is this referring to the page itself or the viewable section of the page within the viewport, since a 300x250 ad unit would easily take up more than 30% of the viewport.

[ember]

It is referring to the page, not the screen. There is a Google guy answering questions about this in the help forums. I posted a link to it in the "Google Chrome Starts Blocking Ads..." thread here, but the link didn't work (Keyplyr kindly fixed it for me) but I still can't make the link work here.

[edited by: ember at 3:42 pm (utc) on Jan 20, 2018]

[Cralamarre]

So the disruptive experience refers to those sites with a paragraph of content, an ad, another paragraph, another ad, and so on.

[nubchai]

@Rokramne yes, I don't know what I was thinking. I adjusted all my sites. Thanks for your help.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

Last few months with Adsense made a new rule in my family – now “Google” is like a Voldemort from Harry Poter – “he who must not be named”. Another one disgusting Adsense day here…

I think we will face another drop because of Government shutdown in US. Hope it will be short-lived.

[nubchai]

One thing surprises me about the 30% mobile density rule and yet doesn't surprise me is that Google hasn't supplied a testing tool for publishers. If we had a link to a tool, we could do a pretest of our mobile sites and make any necessary corrections.

[MayankParmar]

@Nubchai Yep, exactly. I'm not sure if I'm violating the 30% ad density thing. I'll reduce the number of ads, it's better than no ads. One ad on header, another after a para and last one at the bottom of the page.

[nubchai]

@Mayank that's exactly what I'm doing.

[Maximum44]

Having a great day today.

[Ironside]

@Maximum complete opposite here. As a matter of interest, what's your best performing ad size and what position is it?

[Kash1111]

Our site passed the mobile ad experience even when we had 6 ads on a page, header, 2 in content, one at the end of content, then content.ad, another ad below that. We have a page rpm of $7.

We have made one change since adx won't allow ad to be viewed before content. We have moved our header ad into the content. The desktop version has not been reviewed yet. Ad filters are off.

[nubchai]

Kash1111 Congrats. Did you somehow submit your site for review? Or did you have to wait until they got to you?

[MrJefe]

If I had a Page RPM of $7, I'd be quite content with that.
Instead, I consider a $1 RPM average for the month a good month.

[Kash1111]

@nubchai

Thank you. I did not submit the site for review, I don't think there is a way? All I did was add the site as a property in webmaster tool, I checked a few days later and the mobile site passed ad experience.

[nubchai]

@Kash1111 that's interesting. They must do the review right away for new sites.

[ember]

Our site passed the mobile ad experience even when we had 6 ads on a page

Yes, but how much content is on the pages? Does it meet the required content to ad ratio?

I could be completely wrong, but I have a feeling that they are going to be somewhat lenient with sites at first, particularly since they've provided no testing tool. If they are really strict, they could lose a lot of revenue overnight, or at least in the short term.

[Kash1111]

Just to clarify it's not a new site. The ownership was transferred :). It has the green tick, nothing to fix. Ad filters off, region A.

[nubchai]

In a totally informal survey, I spoke to 7 people I know who use Adsense on their sites. After I asked, they checked, and none of their sites have been reviewed. It makes me wonder if the deadline won't be pushed out.

[NickMNS]

A- Horrible day today. Past few days were looking better, in other words what a bad day used to look like. But today is horrid, a weekend thing I guess.
B- BAS

It makes me wonder if the deadline won't be pushed out.

There should be no reason for a push out, some sites may simply continue to shows ads despite not passing.

Calculating what 30% should be easy, take 360px screen width, determine the height of the page in pixels. Then sum the height of all your ad units. Finally divide total summed ad height / total page height, that should give you pretty good indication. This assumes that all you ads are full width, which typically they are for that screen size.

[NickMNS]

I just checked my stats more thoroughly, coverage is up 10% today. Weird?

[keyplyr]

I could be completely wrong, but I have a feeling that they are going to be somewhat lenient with sites at first, particularly since they've provided no testing tool.

Yes, they're lenient... they give you 30 days after a violation is detected. If you haven't fixed the problems and submitted your review request, Chrome goes ahead and blocks all the ads at your site.

Chrome will remove all ads from sites that have a “failing” status in the Ad Experience Report for more than 30 days.

Since this report is not completed yet (for most sites) we likely won't see ads actually blocked until the 2nd or 3rd week in March... and probably much later.

[NeapTide]

I am quite sure it won't be a human reviewing ad experience on sites. Instead bots will do it and they can do it much faster although their accuracy can be questioned.