April 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Ironside]

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System: The following 18 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4889486.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 6:42 pm on Apr 1, 2018 (utc -5)

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I am up to 14 clicks with a 12p CPC so far today. But it's still early afternoon in the US so hopefully, things will get slightly better. At least marchers earnings were a lot better than January's.

@May Is it possible to work out how many clicks were disabled.

[frankleeceo]

2.3% clawback for march, 10% less earning than february.

I doubt they'll give you any information about the reductions, much less returning amount back to you.

[Travis]

God dammit. xxx clawback. 30% clawback. WHAT!?

Same here, 30% ! I've never seen this before, since 10 years, I usually have less than 1% deducted from the finalized earning. All other values are normal. I wonder if it can be fraudulent advertisers who didn't pay or, claimed they made mistake in their bids and asked refunds...

(be careful, this is against the Adsense TOS to post your earning)

[MayankParmar]

@Travis Glad to know that I'm not alone :D I sent an email to AdSense, can you please do that as well? Maybe it's a bug. Some publishers told me that Google will restore some $$$ after a couple of days. Remember how the balance is in negative sometime? It is rectified later

$500 is not the exact number ;)

I doubt they'll give you any information about the reductions, much less returning amount back to you.

:(

[Paul Stewart]

@Runfun

You said, "Google should exclude publishers with less than 100,000 ad impressions a month. Kind of the solution they made with YouTube advertising."

I was thinking the same.

This is the only solution to clear the sinking RPM and earnings.

I hope Google will implement this before medium and big publishers remove AdSense and go for Affiliate Marketing or any other options.

I had a plan to invest time, money and energy to create another site and monetize with AdSense. But after viewing the earnings / AdSense performance, I have abandoned this plan.

Now I am planning for an exit. I do not believe it will be a good idea to depend on AdSense in the long run.

It will be wise if we create our exit plan before we face sudden AdSense collapse and our financial collapse too.

It may be too early but I think signs are becoming clear that it will be dangerous to depend on AdSense in the future.

All publishers who are monetizing with AdSense should ready their Plan B so that in case of the sudden collapse of AdSense, they are not hit hard.

Everyone beware!

[edited by: Paul_Stewart at 7:11 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2018]

[child please]

I had one of my lowest claw backs in a long time...just over 1%. Usually it's double that and ends up being over $200 deducted.

[Paul Stewart]

@MayankParmar
@Travis

You are not alone.

Mine was about 4% for last month and it was 7+% for February.

It was always less than 1% in last year.

I am not sure but I guess more and more people are visiting websites from their mobile devices and "mistakenly" clicking on ads.

These "mistakenly" clicks on ads are INVALID CLICKS.

It is easy to click on ads mistakenly in a device with small screen.

As more and more people will start browsing from their mobile devices, the publishers will experience more invalid clicks.

Invalid clicks = Clawbacks.

More mobile using visitors = More Invalid clicks = More Clawbacks.

[edited by: Paul_Stewart at 7:16 pm (utc) on Apr 1, 2018]

[azlinda]

I am not sure but I guess more and more people are visiting websites from their mobile devices and "mistakenly" clicking on ads.

How would they determine that? The amount of time spent at the URL destination; i.e. leaving the destination immediately?

[ember]

Now I am planning for an exit. I do not believe it will be a good idea to depend on AdSense in the long run.

It will be wise if we create our exit plan before we face sudden AdSense collapse and our financial collapse too.

I did that years ago. Adsense still does well for me, though not like it used to, but I also have a part-time job, sub teach occasionally, do freelance writing, etc. just in case. It's all extra money now, but I keep doing them so I have immediate options in place if Adsense suddenly crashes.

[Paul Stewart]

@azlinda

Exactly.

If a webpage visitor clicks on an ad link and goes to another web page and understands that he/she has clicked on an ad, he/she will "immediately" or "very quickly" go back or close the window. This is how Google measures if a "click" will be "rewarded". I lost the page link where I found this method.

In a nutshell, "real user interaction" is very important to reward a click or mark it as an invalid click.

As Google is facing more competition from others in advertising ad revenue, it is getting more strict on this than ever before.

Facebook has hijacked a huge advertising revenue from Google and it was a huge slap on the face of Google. Just try to remember how your AdSense RPM/revenue was before the Facebook opened its doors for advertisers.

Several very big advertisers have also left Google as Google refused to listen to their demands.

Now others are also challenging Google by offering cheaper clicks.

I have a feeling that Google is less or more nervous now. So, it is tightening its rules and desperately punishing us, the publishers. Huge invalid clicks/clawbacks is one of the form of punishment.

[Runfun]

You know what's 'funny', I use both Adsense and Adwords and with Adsense I have a montley clawback of about 2.5 percent but as user of Adwords I never got money back after a month from the clawbacks of publishers... what's wrong with this? :-)

[MayankParmar]

I agree with you Paul. Google managed to ruin my happy day. Still I hope they will fund some amount of clawback. It's ridiculous.

Working on plan B.

[Paul Stewart]

@MayankParmar

I think it maybe dangerous to contact Google AdSense and ask for some of your clawback money.

The arrogant Google AdSense employees can ban your account without an explanation or with a vague and stupid reason.

In my opinion, it is better not to contact them to argue or demand anything.

It will be better if you just digest it.

Always think of your safety first before starting an argument with a company that does not give a damn, is always aggressive and has behavior problem.

Give a second thought before contacting them.

[KaseyM]

Those clawbacks are rough. I've never seen mine go over 3% and even then I crap my pants!

[MayankParmar]

@Paul I've only asked them to look into the matter and confirm whether it is a bug or something else, and provide a detailed technical explanation. If they claim it the clawback is because of bad traffic, Sucuri is here to help. The host; Cloudways will jump in too.

[robzilla]

Did you know that there was a Google AdSense scandal too?

A former Google AdSense employee leaked that Google was banning publisher accounts and stealing their money.

The scandal is that people actually bought that story, and apparently still do.

If you believe everything you read, better not read.

[CommandDork]

Clawback here was 4% (of course it always feels like 40% though :) ). Anyway, I suspect having AdLinks active worsens this total.

[azlinda]

Try a 40% clawback month after month, with very few clicks every day, with Sucuri internet security, and under half my visitors using mobile devices. It gets very tiresome and discouraging. That's why I will NEVER have anything to do with Google again.

[cyberkix]

unfortunately, there is no plan B, clickbank was dead, cj was dead, amazon affiliate earns too less, no good alternative ads plateform as google paid

[cyberkix]

I used to earn auto money in this 10 yrs, I am now moving to forex to continuous my autopilot money.

[edited by: cyberkix at 4:14 am (utc) on Apr 2, 2018]

[cyberkix]

maybe this is my Plan B

[stever]

The last six months or so, I've seen fairly heavy clawback (30-50%) although my AS placement is not in-your-face (1 link and 1 responsive box), it's not in a dog-eat-dog space and I don't have any problems with responsive design covering up ads at certain screen sizes or similar stuff.

Or so I thought.

I removed the AS responsive box from main websites to try to identify the problem. Last month I was just left with an innocuous AS side link ad (which doesn't float or look like nav links) on my top site and was hit with a deduction which, from the size of it, must have been from that unit.

Looking at it in another brower, I realised that a (very popular) floating cookie consent script box would potentially cover the AS ads when scrolled and that the "Got It" confirmation button could potentially be seen as an invitation to a misleading click on an AS unit...

The irony is, naturally, that many of us are only using the cookie consent box precisely because Google required it in the first place and the only cookies being placed are those from Google.

I've just now switched to a static top placement for the cookie consent box and will monitor what happens but others might like to check this.

[Maximum44]

Less than a 1% clawback here. We do not use any link units.

[MayankParmar]

But link ad have high CTR as they are supposed to be clicked twice or more. And two link ad is okay with Google TOS.

[cyberkix]

yes, link ad unit has very high ctr, but since 15 March, Google has dropped its CPC over 50% in link ad unit, but overall the revenue of link ad unit is still higher than that of other ads format

[robzilla]

Or so I thought.

[...]

I've just now switched to a static top placement for the cookie consent box and will monitor what happens but others might like to check this.

Thanks for sharing, it's a good reminder to look critically at one's site using different browsers and devices, especially when you're facing high clawbacks or other indicators of poor performance.

[Maximum44]

Extremely bad Adsense day today so far.

[KaseyM]

Traffic is fantastic but my god are all ad networks slow.

[azlinda]

I only used ad links for a very short time several months ago, then got rid of them, so ad links weren't my problem.

[surfgatinho]

Publishers Beware! And ready your plan B.

This is all I ever think about - it's become almost obsessive! If I'm not doing something, I'm thinking about Plan B - and drawing a blank...

Last year was my best ever on Adsense. I did very well - could have retired on that kind of traffic 10 years ago!.

This year traffic is up 10% but CPC is down 20% YoY. Something isn't quite right and I feel it is at the advertisers end.

I can't see Adsense getting any easier and the alternatives just don't work for me. I've been earning high 4 figure sums monthly through Adsense - at the same time affiliate banners have earnt my zero, zilch, nada!

I suppose on the plus side I enjoy what I do so maybe I should be happy presiding over an ever declining empire and seeing if I can make it to retirement!