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 :)

[MayankParmar]

The experience is completely different on a iPhone 5s, iPhone 6 and Xiaomi Mi Max. If I fix the ad density problem on Mi Max, it's likely that the ads will be still blocked on iPhone 5s, and maybe on iPhone 6.

[azlinda]

This is a new low! Twelve clicks and made $0.01.

[nubchai]

Yes, Adsense looks dead today so far

[NickMNS]

@MayankParmar

The experience is completely different on a iPhone 5s,

Yes completely. IPhone users will likely not get their ads blocked at all as this BAS applies to Google Chrome only. And I'm not sure if it will even work on Chrome for iOS as that is just a dressed up version of Safari.

That a side, the ads should be most dense on the smallest screens, because the ads will take up the full width. So if you use the measure I described previously you should be good on all devices. You don't need to worry below 360px, because the only commonly used phone still in use is iPhone5.

[ember]

This is how Brandon, the Google guy, explains 30% density:

"The main content area of the page starts at the beginning of the content (typically the Headline for an article page) and continues through to the end of the article. For multi-page articles or galleries, this would be the bottom of the navigation (next/previous buttons). The height of this whole area is the denominator. Let's say it's 1,000 pixels.

The ad height is calculated by adding up the vertical height of all of the ads on the page starting at the very top of the page all the way down to the end of the main content area defined above. If there is a sticky ad on the page, the height is also added. Let's say the total height of the all of the ads ads up to 275 pixels.

Ad Density = 275 / 1000 = 27.5%."

[Ironside]

From my statistics, more people access my website using iPhone. I haven't checked exactly which versions but I suspect most people will upgrade to the latest version so at least the ads are showing quite well. Just wish I could work out why earnings are so dismal lately. I replaced the responsive ad unit with a media.net at the top of the page in between the title and my menu, however, that has had hardly any interest in us and be about two dollars in a week so I'm not going to waste my time keeping that there. I found that the best place for media.net is at the bottom of the page.

It seems that the responsive banner located just under the first paragraph of text (in between paragraphs) and my 300 x 600 ads placed within a paragraph of text of the best animals at the moment.

CPC is at 17p at the moment so if I could get a decent amount of clicks it wouldn't be a disaster. I'm getting plenty of visitors, the clicks just seem to have dropped out quite a lot

[Unshiny]

Hi - First time poster, longtime lurker. As they say.

Google adsense earnings fell off a cliff for us in mid January. My traffic is still the same, my fill rate and clicks still the same, and no blocked crawlers. I am at a loss. Has ANYONE heard anything at all beyond the "sometimes we're serving blank ads" posted elsewhere?

The only change is that we have recently added the ads.txt file thing.

Any advice greatly appreciated. We follow all the TOS.

[Ironside]

@Unshiny welcome to the community. Unfortunately, I fear that you won't get a conclusive answer to your question because there are not many people who have not been affected by this drastic drop in earnings. I have absolutely no idea why my earnings have dropped the way they have because I'm still getting the same amount of visitors.

It would be interesting to know how some of the really big top earners are doing, the guys that are making several hundred thousand dollars a month. Don't suppose they would come on here and divulge any information, but if we are suffering that I don't see why they wouldn't be. It is quite feasible to say that $400,000 could drop down to $100,000 for some of these sites. If that were to be the case then we might as well not even bother having a discussion on why it's happening.

[nubchai]

Unshiny this is the worst I've seen Adsense in years. We have also complied with the TOS. There's really been no response from Adsense that I've seen which addresses the drop in income, which seems to have affected a lot of publishers.

[NickMNS]

@ember just like I said with the very important distinction that they use only the main content container height as the denominator.

Essentially to over simplify this works out to 1 x [300 x 250] ad unit for every 1000 px of height.

So 1 leader boarder near the header, 1 footer ad and then 1 square ad for every 1000px of content.

[Unshiny]

Thanks so much guys. I wonder who those big players that Ironside is referencing actually are. (For example, last time I checked, freakin' ebay was running adsense ads. I'd quite happily write and beg their web team... if we can figure out which might be good outlets to try.

Glad to be part of the place, hope to one day share happy news/useful info and not angst.

[Ironside]

Something is going on with Google. Google-owned YouTube, don't they? But they just sent me a message the other day telling me that one of my channels didn't meet their strict requirements on viewer figures and video time and basically they are taking away my ability to earn any money from the videos. If they are going to do that would YouTube than what's stopping them doing it with people who have websites that are hardly any traffic but do have AdSense.

I've always thought that there isn't enough to go around everyone. In all fairness, Google AdSense is one of the easiest ways to make money or has been in previous years. If you can get a half decent website together and get approved then you can make some money. Problem is, too many people are doing it nowadays. I just don't think there's enough to go around everyone.

Also, maybe people are becoming immune to Google advertising now. You may find that somebody new to the Internet will click on ads not really know what they are. After a while they become wise and avoid them.

[keyplyr]

Hello Unshiny and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

[frankleeceo]

Re: Ad density rules: End of Content and Footer ad does not count against "main content real estate" in ad density calculation. This distinction makes a big difference on how many ad slots you can fill without tripping the better ad standard rules. Ie. 300x600 units at the end of the content is probably the best location for a bigger vertical size. Specifically, navigation and link recommendations do not count as "main content" neither. This means that you cannot use these as a part of your main content, BUT this also means that ads in this area also do not count against you. This is gold if you can understand it and work with it.

The exact calculation results in roughly 1 unit of 300x250 per every 833 px of content. 250/833 = 30%. And ps (sometimes reviewers consider ads as a part of "main content". So if you want to push the limit and see if you can get away with things, 1 unit of 300x250 per every 583 px of content. 250 / (583+250) = 30%. Math and simple percentage matters, depending on the input and how you read and interpret the rules. But you probably do not push it so close to 30%, in case reviewers slip. Settle with 25~28%. (This means that the @NickMNS's simplication of 1 unit per 1000 px is probably a great guideline to go by)

Sometimes header ad (After Site Title but Above Page title) does not count against "main content real estate", this depends on the reviewer. I count it to be safe in my personal site design. The reason: "Site Title" and "Page Title" itself is not main content. It's up to interpretation.

This is actual observation based on my sites that have been reviewed and flagged non-passing, and later requested to be re-viewed and earned passing grade. They will show their calculation via video walkthrough to show exactly how they derive that number percentage. (Which is awesome btw to help us understand how they interpret the rules, without it I would have never gotten to my working conclusions).

Re: Big publishers
The truly big guys use adsense as back fill against remnant inventory, after direct deals with much higher RPM's. A deep discount against adsense doesn't really hurt bottom lines, much. In a way, they could care less about how adsense is performing, but rather try to sell more ad spaces direct, as that is really the profit leader. Direct deals for them probably account for more than 80% of their income. Good business is to care about the profit leaders more and less attention on these remnant ad spaces. I do not have that account size, but have heard from a few that talked. These are generally account managers in a bigger organizations.

Re: Observation
I am still seeing RPM improvements as the month is ending. My lowest RPM was on January 8, and now I am logging roughly double of that.

[Ironside]

@Frank I just had a quick look at the homepage of the reported #1 AdSense earner (I'm sure you know who I'm talking about) and I'm seeing the same old rubbish that I see on any other mediocre website.

[MayankParmar]

So 1 leader boarder near the header, 1 footer ad and then 1 square ad for every 1000px of content.

Reducing the number of ads is the ultimate solution. I think I don't need Adpushup then, they will never ever reduce the ads

[keyplyr]

If there is even a question that ads may be close to the 30% threshold, that's too much for a good user experience and IMO that web page should be blocked from displaying ads. Stuff like this is what caused the Adblocker trend in the first place. Website owners shot themselves in the foot.

[Cralamarre]

@keyplyr I couldn't agree more.

[KaseyM]

CPM's up across the board with the exception of one network. Guess which one.

[kegnum]

Im seeing a lot of sites in my niche remove all ads from content. They move them to below the main title of the site. To me having a big ad at the very top is even worse. Those technically the content area is ad free... the sites look even more spammy.

[azlinda]

Stuff like this is what caused the Adblocker trend in the first place.

I have a different take on it. I think that what caused people to begin using ad blockers were in-your-face ads, such as popup ads that interfered with what you were trying to read, along with popup subscription reminders. And, while we're at it, just as bad are the recipe sites with the same dish photographed from five different angles. There are people who are not interested in all the verbiage and photographs before they get to a recipe. The recipes are always at the very bottom of those blogger pages. That, in my opinion, is a bad user experience, and it is as disturbing to me as popup ads.

[NickMNS]

CPM's up across the board with the exception of one network. Guess which one.

Certainly not Adwords, as Adwords doesn't ever use CPM only CPC or AV-CPM.

[Mentat]

Traffic is ok, but payment is registering new low values...
It's incredible/horrible.

[azlinda]

Essentially to over simplify this works out to 1 x [300 x 250] ad unit for every 1000 px of height.

So, if I went from a three-column format to a two-column format, that means that my content will have less height because my content width increased as it has now consumed where the left rail was. So, conceivably I would have been better off with the old three-column format as it relates to this height rule?

[Kash1111]

Do I use an adblocker? Yes, I do. The only reason I use it because there are certain websites that throw pop up ads, which is annoying. They redirect you to another page. I find that annoying as hell, so yeah I use adblocker. Even adblockers are not blocking these pop up ads. they reduce them.

I unblock websites that don't use these types of ads. I am fine with seeing ads in content. My guess is that someone installed an adblocker because they went on to visit that site they like a lot but annoyed by the popups and redirects. Which unfortunately blocks ads on every website.

Adblockers default to blocking ads on every website. I think this should change somehow.

Anyway, our earnings for January have dropped by 30%. Lower rpm and cpc. Changes with facebook feed haven't helped either. That's okay more of our content is ranking in search engines, so that should even things out.

[azlinda]

My guess is that someone installed an adblocker because they went on to visit that site they like a lot but annoyed by the popups and redirects.

Wouldn't it make more sense to be able to just ad-block on specific sites instead of penalizing all of them? I think when the software companies went for this ad blocking software, they didn't think it through! Or maybe they just didn't care about the webmasters who operate sites who are considerate of visitors. Still, as far as I'm concerned, when someone comes onto our sites using an ad blocker, that is outright bandwidth theft.

[azlinda]

Just throwing this out there. Perhaps a class action suit would change the way ad blockers work. They are penalizing people whose only source of income on their websites is advertising.

[nubchai]

@frankleeceo do you know how sidebar ads are treated? These are not part of the main content window. On mobile devices they also tend to drop to the very bottom, well under then end of any content.

Great advice on header and footer ads.

[frankleeceo]

@nubchai, thanks! glad to be of help. But I should stress again about header units, you should still generally consider the header ads as main content, or at least do not use 300x250 units for those locations. The 50px or 100px units are better. It's better to be on safe side with that other than getting dinged for getting it too close. For shorter content sites a single 300x250 can be too much. It still depends hugely on the reviewer for certain units locations.

sidebar ads will generally not be treated as main content for setups that drop to the end of content, I believe. My sites also drop the sidebar to the end in mobile responsive design.

This is assuming that you do not use "sidebar" as a part of your main content. Most people usually use sidebar as link navigation, recommendations / boilerplate, so I assume as such. Certain sites could indeed make sidebar as "main content", but that setup will then be up to debate / pushing the boundary of rules. However, with that said, in the walkthrough videos flagged by ad experience team, they do not scroll past the comment (UGC) section of my sites (which means the sidebar was completely overlooked / ignored)

I should add that I am a huge believer in viewability, having too many out of view ads that generate very little viewability metric can hurt overall / long term earning potential of a site. So in this case if we want to load everything up = 1 end of content ad + 1 footer ad + 1 sidebar ad that are all generally out of view can be a poor setup. In my design personally, I will either opt for either footer or sidebar, but not both. (And in practice I actually opt for sidebar, just because it has higher chance of being viewed than footer ads).

So keep this in mind too during site design. Good luck!

[nubchai]

@frank thanks for the awesome information. My sidebars are a mix of a few non-Adsense ads, navigation, search option, newsletter option etc. so I'm good there. I also use content.ad ads at the end of my content. They're similar to Taboola, but I suspect they'd be excluded too.

It's nice to hear from someone who's been through the process. Thanks again :)