February 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[MayankParmar]

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System: The following 33 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4880340.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 9:06 am on Feb 2, 2018 (utc -5)

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No improvements here guys, it's all dead and getting worse.

Last day of January is really pathetic :(

[MayankParmar]

Has anyone who is having issues with ads showing up been reviewed in webmaster tools?

"Not reviewed" here.

google ads taking up to 10 seconds to load

Having the same problem since last 3 hours, even G Analytics confirmed it.

Entire site loaded but the Chrome's blue bar page loading is at around 90% for another 15-20s on Mobile.

[azlinda]

@Azlinda your ad impressions must be down to hell then?

They're in the proverbial toilet!

[riccarbi]

Google ads load pretty fast. Everything is still "not reviewed".

[azlinda]

@azlinda, did your website fail the ad standards review?

I check twice a day, and as of this morning, my website still has not been reviewed. There would be absolutely no reason for it to fail a review either.

[riccarbi]

But, if the problem is the "not reviewed" state, why did they start the "brand protection" thing at full speed without having previously reviewed more, if not all, Adsense-enabled websites?
It looks as they were hurried into the "brand protection mode", maybe because of the US-election fake-news issue, without being ready for it

[edited by: riccarbi at 4:24 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2018]

[azlinda]

According to the BAS Google hangout from Dublin, Ireland, that I attended several days ago, you will only be actively notified of a failing status. I took that to mean that you would get email from them.

[KaseyM]

Pretty awful across all networks but particularly adsense/adx. Lord knows what it'll be like on February 15th when Better Ads come in.

[nubchai]

@AZLinda I haven't updated to the new version of Chrome. Does it have the option to turn off the ad blocker? It sounds like it was blocking your ads by default.

[riccarbi]

Pretty awful across all networks but particularly adsense/adx. Lord knows what it'll be like on February 15th when Better Ads come in.

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

What will happen to those websites which by February 15th will still be in a "not reviewed" state?
Again, is Google actually ready for such a move considering how many websites have not been reviewed to date?

[edited by: riccarbi at 5:02 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2018]

[ember]

Lord knows what it'll be like on February 15th when Better Ads come in.

If your site has been reviewed and passed, you should be fine. If it has not been reviewed, you should be fine until it is reviewed. If it is reviewed and fails, then you will have 30 days to fix the issues and ask for another review. If you use Adsense, you should be fine, although keep an eye out for the 30% density rule. If they ding you on that, then remove some ads. I'd be concerned about using other ad networks, though, especially media.net since they seem clueless about this coming filter.

I don't see major changes on February 15 because so many sites have still not been reviewed.

[MayankParmar]

@ember I'm actually confused about the 30% density rule. At one point, half of 300x250 ad and half of link ad is visible together, is this okay with the rule?

Also, if one old page fails to meet any rule, the entire site will be blocked?

[edited by: MayankParmar at 5:07 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2018]

[NeapTide]

This month I received email that I have submitted a request to remove an app from Play Store that is violating some sort of store policy. Previous month I received the same email but I ignored that. Who the hell is using my email to submit the report or may there is some bug going on in system?

By the way RPM is tanked for one of my site. Just 0.77 average. Last few years it remained between 1.3 - 2.0. For other site it is 3.41 this month.

[riccarbi]

I'm actually confused about the 30% density rule. At one point, half of 300x250 ad and half of link ad is visible, is this fine with the rule?

I guess it means that if ads units take more than 30% of your page's content (by vertical height, which means you have arguably very few content in that page, indeed), your page is considered too "ads-dense" and does not comply with BAS.

Of course, a site can have both short and long content pages, I don't know if the density limit is on average or per single page, and if a single page over the limit can cause the entire site to be penalized..

[ember]

The thing to remember about the density rule is it applies to the page, not to the screen. So an ad can take up more than 30% of the screen, just not more than 30% the content of the verticle height of the page. The content portion excludes headers, footers and navigation. I think they're doing it this way because there are so many screen sizes. And my understanding is that one failing page can trigger filtering on an entire site, although I've also read that the issue on the page would have to be fairly egregious for that to happen. They wanted to filter page by page but found that too difficult. Maybe that will change down the road.

[ken_b]

If you Google ...

"30% of the page" clarification

The first link should take you to a thread about the 30% deal on the help forums.

[azlinda]

Does it have the option to turn off the ad blocker? It sounds like it was blocking your ads by default.

I haven't updated to the new Chrome version either, so I don't know. Perhaps I should upgrade to it because I will not use it anymore for any browsing.

[azlinda]

If anyone would like the BAS PDF file that Google sent me after I attended their hangout several days ago, PM me, and I will send it to you. It explains quite a bit.

[nubchai]

@AZLinda. Thanks!

[MayankParmar]

just not more than 30% the content of the verticle height of the page.

Two 300x250 ads or 300x600 in between the content ads units, will be the culprit then.

And it also excludes the 300x600 sidebar ad?
I've several old articles with just 100 words, and they don't get any views now, so they have zero ads, I don't care about these articles. So what about these pages?

[ember]

To be honest, I am not sure about the sidebar ad. If it stacks on a mobile and becomes part of the page height, then it probably counts toward the 30%. Two 300x250 or a 300x600 would be okay if there is enough content on the page. Pages with no ads are safe.

[vegasrick]

Something very strange today. My CTR and clicks have really been slow. The slowest day in YEARS, unless there is something wrong with the stats again.

[vegasrick]

@mayank

It's only the 30% of the "main content"

Which means, the article itself. You can load up a 100 ads after the article ends. They don't count. It's the article itself, from the start of the article to the end.

[azlinda]

This is the first line of my ads.txt file.

#Ads.txt example.com

This is the message I get when I try to validate it:

Line 1: The ads.txt validator could not parse this line.
Please make sure it follows the format specified by the IAB

Does anyone know what could be wrong?

[edited by: azlinda at 9:19 pm (utc) on Feb 9, 2018]

[riccarbi]

And it also excludes the 300x600 sidebar ad?

AFAIK, the 30% rule only applies to mobile websites. I suppose having a sidebar on a mobile site is not very appropriate in any case..

[ember]

AFAIK, the 30% rule only applies to mobile websites.

True, and if you think about it, if half your people are on mobile and half of them use Chrome, at worst it would mean having 25% of ads blocked if your site fails and you do not fix the problems. Not good but not like having all ads blocked for all users.

[kegnum]

Literally watching google remove money. 8% less money now than an hour ago with an extra 10K pageviews... this is where my rpm is.. So i guess playing with ad location is pointless if they are just not going to count clicks

[sdksjdksjd]

re density
What about AJAX loaded content on scroll? Does it count?
Can't find anything on this.

[jbayabas]

@azlinda. I think your syntax is wrong. Check out The Atlantic’s ads.txt

[theatlantic.com...]

[deriklogov]

Do you know if something similar to this [adrevenueindex.ezoic.com...] (revenue index) exist in traffic index ? Like for example "super bowl" was traffic drop for everyone, right now olympic games, so do you know if something exist that showing that on overall traffic ?

[nubchai]

@azlinda this is a barebones ads.txt file that I started with and worked:

#Ads.txt websitename.com

google.com, pub-99999999999999999, DIRECT, f08c47fec0942fa0

(Just replace website name and your pub id)