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 :)

[frankleeceo]

@NickMSN, yeah at millions of URL's any crawler probably wouldn't work. With your traffic and setup, you probably will require some sort of manual override. do you have personal contacts at adsense? Does adsense have capability to whitelists sites? Even if indexing could be a issue, could they whitelist umbrella url's or subfolders which might improve your situation? Maybe they do have a limit on the number of URL's that their adsense DB will keep, and new URL's added to the index can phase / overwrite previous entries. At least that's how I perceive their regular search index.

My seasonal coverage drop is roughly the same YoY, meaning Dec -> January drop is roughly the same as last year, no additional drop other than seasonal differences. But I have suffered drops due to my site layout redesign.

To soften the blow, could it be possible to funnel some of your users towards the same pages. ie. Funnel users to pages with most visited page with adsense, and for the lesser visited pages serve them with other ad network. At least that's what I might do in your situation, temporarily. This is more of a useability suggestion and workaround in your case.

In terms of consolidating data, are you getting direct traffic into those individual millions of pages? If you are, consolidating data might not be feasible since you'll be giving up traffic anyways. Search is a tricky beast. I personally would rather keep the traffic and find other ways to monetize that traffic, than to give it up to fulfill adsense's policy requirements.

[MayankParmar]

do you have personal contacts at adsense? Does adsense have capability to whitelists sites?

If he had, he would have done that already. I'm pretty sure they are whitelisting the 'big' traffic sites, that's how the business works.

[MayankParmar]

Link ads have got horses emoji?! What kind of joke is this lol
[imgur.com...]

[glitterball]

@nomis5

AI has finally enabled G to identify quality content, or at least identify some content which is not quality.

You are joking, right? I see UK tabloids running click-bait and factually incorrect articles outranking all of the quality specialist websites in my niche. Some of them are Express articles that are just plain fake news with headlines about events that just didn't happen.

This so-called AI, based on big data is not very clever: I can't help thinking that it if we asked it what is the best music, it would come back with Westlife before Beethoven.

[MayankParmar]

Some of them are Express articles that are just plain fake news with headlines about events that just didn't happen.

+1
Pure clickbait articles with some words in CAPITAL just to attract clicks and surprisingly it ranks really well in my niche too.

[Ironside]

I put my ad balancer back to 100% last night and earnings are slightly ahead of what they have been for the last two or three weeks at this time of the day. I think it's too early to say whether it has made a difference but it will be interesting to see what my earnings are for today with the ad balancer in the 100% position for the whole day.

[Grapetimes]

Anyone else noticing a slightly lower CPC today?

[trebuchet]

I have not noticed any significant drop this month, beyond the usual post-Christmas malaise. Traffic, RPM and coverage are below par but that's been the cast in the last 3-4 Januarys.

[MayankParmar]

CPC is same as before. All I'm seeing is whales, horses emoji on link ads and this is not even funny anymore.

[Mentat]

The problem is that the things are going down, not up.
I see only garbage ads on my site and Ad Review.

The traffic and CTR are steady, the ads are awful - this is the main problem. It's an inventory problem and It's getting worse!

I don't know where are all the advertisers. Don't tell me Facebook!

The problem is there is no diversity! Even I, now I'm buying things from a few retailers that are not advertising at all!
Now I see only .com camouflaged Chinese store ads - retargeting.

[elman]

- put your ad balance to 100%
- put 3 adsense bloc in your page
- go to your adsense dashboard and block all advertisers you don't like

Then just wait for some hours and your good earnings will be back.

[Ironside]

@Elman are you saying put non-responsive rectangular ads between paragraphs? I.e. 300 x 250 or 336 x 280. Would you recommend one under the first paragraph of text and then near the end and one in the middle of the article? It's worth a try, but I am extremely doubtful it will make any difference. If it was easy as that then we wouldn't be having problems because I'm sure people have tried this before.

[elman]

I'm using something people never tried before : try to understand what's this code doing :)

$ad_code = "your adsense code";
$content = "your content";
$closing_p = '</p>';
$paragraphs = count(explode( $closing_p, $content )) - 1;
$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code, $pos, $content );

[Ironside]

It would be helpful if you will explain exactly why you think this code will benefit us?

I'm assuming that my code and content is placed where prompted? However, where would you place the code on the page?

[NickMNS]

@elman what is the point of randomizing the position of three identical code blocks, besides wasting cpu power?

[elman]

@NickMNS you can use 3 differents blocs and randomize them.

The main advantage ? You avoid user ad blindness.

[Ironside]

So these changed position on the page every time it is loaded?

[NickMNS]

Sorry maybe I don't understand are you only choosing to show one of three possible ad slots per page?

[elman]

@Ironside+, the position change every time it is loaded. Try with F5 :)

@NickMNS+, no I use the three slots. The code I provide is just a sample, you can improve it like this for example

$ad_code1 = "your adsense code 1";
$ad_code2 = "your adsense code 2";
$ad_code3 = "your adsense code 3";
$content = "your content";
$closing_p = '</p>';
$paragraphs = count(explode( $closing_p, $content )) - 1;

$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code1, $pos, $content );
$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code2, $pos, $content );
$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code3, $pos, $content );

[Ironside]

So would you just place the code in your header, or just at the top of the page?

[elman]

@Ironside, the main purpose of this piece of php code is to show you the idea of randomizing adsense banners position. Now it's depend on what kind of framework you're using with your website. wordpress ? joomla ? etc.

For wordpress for example, you can use this piece of code in your functions.php, in hooking the function the_content, it means that you can process the ad operation before the content is rendered.

This is the complete code I'm using in functions.php

<?php } 
add_filter( 'the_content', 'prefix_insert_post_ads' );

function prefix_insert_post_ads( $content ) {
$closing_p = '</p>';
$paragraphs = count(explode( $closing_p, $content )) - 1;
$ad_code2 = '<div style="margin-top:10px;margin-bottom:20px;"><script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
  style="display:block; text-align:center;"
  data-ad-format="fluid"
  data-ad-layout="in-article"
  data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXX"
  data-ad-slot="XXXXXXXXXX"></ins>
<script>
  (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script></div>';


//336X280
$ad_code = '<div class="adsense"><script async src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
  style="display:inline-block;width:336px;height:280px"
  data-ad-client="ca-pub-XXXXXXXXXX"
  data-ad-slot="XXXXXXXXXX"></ins>
<script>
  (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});
</script></div>';


if ( is_single() && ! current_user_can('administrator') ) {

$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code, $pos, $content );
}

if ( is_single() && ! current_user_can('administrator') && $paragraphs > 3 ) {

$pos = rand(0, $paragraphs);
$content = prefix_insert_after_paragraph($ad_code2, $pos, $content );
}
return $content;
}

function prefix_insert_after_paragraph( $insertion, $paragraph_id, $content ) {
$closing_p = '</p>';
$paragraphs = explode( $closing_p, $content );
foreach ($paragraphs as $index => $paragraph) {

if ( trim( $paragraph ) ) {
$paragraphs[$index] .= $closing_p;
}

if ( $paragraph_id == $index + 1 ) {
$paragraphs[$index] .= $insertion;
}
}

return implode( '', $paragraphs );
}

?>

I only use 2 slots because I have the third slot in the widget right side of wordpress.
I used some other functions in this code to avoid showing me adsense banner when I'm connected as administrator :)

[edited by: elman at 4:47 pm (utc) on Jan 29, 2018]

[NickMNS]

@elman I understand what you are trying to achieve and the idea is interesting but I am not certain that your are achieving what you hope.

Your code is executed server side so the ad code is on the page when the user gets the page. Adsense gets the request for ads the at the same time as the user so Adsense simply fills the slots. Now if you are using three times the same ad code, this completely pointless. If you are using different ad blocks it maybe equally pointless unless you are changing the ad size or colors. If you are changing the ad size specifically then it may be more efficient to simply modify the size by manipulating the CSS.

However, if you are trying to get Adsense to fill the ad slot and then change the ads position on the page from where Adsense expected it to be then your code is not doing it. But I would warn you that that is a terrible idea that will likely your account banned.

[elman]

NickMNS, Once again, I don't use the same ad code, you can see it with the complete code below.

I don't see in the Google TOS something who forbid me to show the ad in a random position ?

[Ironside]

I have tried different ad positions of varying sizes throughout the pages and I've not found any improvement over what I have at the moment which is a responsive ad unit below the heading and above the first heading, maybe another responsive or fixed ad view the somewhere between article paragraphs and then one right at the bottom of the page. So whereas I can see this code may change the position of the ads I doubt very much whether it will help me personally. It's all very well moving ads around but people are not going to click on them unless it something that interests them.

[NickMNS]

@elman you can do as you like server side because Adsense will never see the change. It will receive the ad code on the page and fill it as it is seen. But unless your different code blocks differ in some manner that affects the physical aspects of the ad unit (size or color) the exercise is pointless. Don't get me wrong, changing the color or size of ads may work towards fighting ad blindness, but if you are not changing size or color but simply taking a different ad unit it will make absolutely no meaningful difference.

But do not manipulate the position of ads after the ads have been served. Bid prices are set based on the location of the ad unit on the page and probability of it being clicked. You are paid more if a below the fold ad is clicked. So if you take a below the fold ad unit and move it above the fold you are changing what the advertisers bid on and that is absolutely against the AdSense T&C.

I encourage you to read this:
[support.google.com...]

[ember]

Don't auto ads do the same thing? Randomize ad placement so it is different for each visitor? And you don't get banned.

[elman]

NickMNS +, lol, so with my system, ads at the bottom of the content .. can pay more than the one at the top of the page :)

[NickMNS]

@ember, there is no issue with randomizing your ad position before the page is put up for auction, this issue is if the bidder is bidding for an ATF slot, but then when the ads is display it is displayed below the fold.

can pay more than the one at the top of the page :)

It is possible. The article explains that the price paid for the BTF click can be increased, whether or not that increase will be more than that of the ATF click is unclear and unlikely.

[MayankParmar]

@Elman Thanks. I get your point. This is what Ezoic and AdPushup do, btw there's a WordPress plugin to do this job, I'm not able to recall its name, but it works like a charm. It does A/B testing for multiple position to avoid ad blindness.

@ember Yes, but Auto Ads is buggy as hell. I still remember Google put two 300x250 ad on header on mobile lol.

@Nick, this is a great idea, and I can bet your earnings would improve, and it doesn't violate Google's policy. If you're worried about the violation, you can join Ezoic or Adpushup to do this, or try Auto ads :P

But it wouldn't help in blank ads issue, I'm once again going to try this once the earnings return to normal level.

[nubchai]

If you use Wordpress you can use a free plugin like AdSense Integration WP QUADS. Set it up to display a random ad in each ad slot on a page.

I've never done this but can see some merit in the ad blindness comment.