Post GDPR earnings

What are the numbers?

[surfgatinho]

So, we are week into the GDPR and I was wondering how it had affected earnings.

It would be good to have some specific metrics if you have experienced a change and it is also quite important to give an idea of your geographical market, e.g. 75% UK or 10% EU etc.

It might also be useful if you could say how much of a drop in earnings you were expecting. This would probably be based on the 'targeting types' report in the Adsense admin.

Also some indication of what you have done to comply - i.e. have you turned off personalised ads, and/or are you using a third party consent system.

[edited by: surfgatinho at 8:59 am (utc) on May 31, 2018]

[surfgatinho]

I'll kick off by saying I have chosen to do nothing, except modify my cookie consent banner (Silktide) text. I have also implemented a way of only showing this to EU visitors (previously it was global). I am about 75% UK with the rest being other English speaking countries.

I did disable personalised ads originally. However, I didn't let it run for long enough to test the outcome. The CPC on some of my sites was less than half the avg at which point I decided to go back to personalised. Having said this, the account-wide CPC was only around 15% down.

From my Adsense 'targeting type' report I'd estimate a 10-15% drop in revenue from switching off personalised ads - which I can just about live with. However, summer is my peak season so I will wait until I absolutely have to turn of personalised....

[ChanandlerBong]

What I've done - turned off personalised ads
what I've not done - anything related to cookies, no banner, no message, nada

I'm down few %, almost not noticeable because it's also coming into summer (my quiet period) and just had big 3-day holiday in big US/UK markets. I'm up on this time last year, but that's expected due to traffic anyway.

It will start to get interesting that some big media sites are continuing to show personalised ads regardless so when AS users get pulled up on that and cookie notices (as I expect to eventually), you'll have people crying "what about them?"

one other thing - why would anyone scupper their earnings pre-emptively when G has made it very clear that they will undertake a process of confirming and warnings? I've heard of a few on here who are not showing ANY ads without explicit consent. Why would you do that to yourselves?

[MayankParmar]

EU earning was down 80%, but recovered slightly. Still I am down 50-60% versus last week / month.

[surfgatinho]

@MayankParmar Is this worse than expected? Did you check in the 'Targeting type' report in the Adsense admin to get an idea of what the personalised / non-personalised ads were paying?

[MayankParmar]

@surfgatinho Yes, I am not surprised. The personalized ads earning is down to cents and contextual ad is slightly up. So the overall earning is down.

[QuaterPan]

For those running personalized-ads without explicit consent (in the EU), this will cause you trouble in a near future. There is nothing to argue, beacuse Google is clear on the subject of personalized-ads, it requires explicit consent, prior to display the ads. And Google provides all kind of tools and procedures to get this consent.

For non personalized-ads without "at least" a "cookie banner", the days are counted too.

For non personalized-ads with implicit "cookie banner", it's not even sure this is compliant enough.

[surfgatinho]

@QuaterPan Yes, I don't really care about this. The EU won't be fining me for a while and until this settles down and there is a workable solution I will carry on.
Implicit consent to run any ads?! I'll chuck the towel in on principle, so what's the worst that can happen?!

Anyway, I set up this thread to get some figures - the other GDPR thread is more suited to implementation / compliance..

[QuaterPan]

The EU won't be fining me

I was not talking about the EU, but Google itself, they clearly stated at the Adsense site, that they'll review publisher's sites, to ensure they are using appropriate consent mechanism.

By the way, so to stay on topic. Like i said at another topic. I disabled adsense ads on my site for all EU visitors (20%) , I also disabled personalized ads for EU, in case by geo localization detection was not perfect. After a week of 20% decrease of earning, normal, my earnings started to rise , by 50% and my ranking improved. I think that, since my site is faster for 20% of my traffic, this is helping with the ranking, if pages speed is a criteria for Google. Also, I noticed more new links, may be people preferring to link to a site without ads. The decrease of the number of ad impression, resulted in an increase in RPM or CTR, which I believe is improving my Adsense quality score.

What I am doing now, is that, for EU visitors, I am showing a cookie banner, and no ads excepting if they click the "OK". And, 80% of clicking the OK button, so, I am displaying again non personalized as to these 80%. In fact, since I obtain an explicit consent, I should re-enable personalized ads. But, contextual ads are performing better than personalized ads did (so far). So , I'll let things like that.

[ember]

Google is clear on the subject of personalized-ads, it requires explicit consent, prior to display the ads. And Google provides all kind of tools and procedures to get this consent.

What tools?

[QuaterPan]

What tools?

For example :
[support.google.com...]
They give details of all the steps to achieve compliance for personalized ads; including delaying the display until the use gives his consent.

[nomis5]

For those running personalized-ads without explicit consent (in the EU), this will cause you trouble in a near future. There is nothing to argue, beacuse Google is clear on the subject of personalized-ads, it requires explicit consent, prior to display the ads. And Google provides all kind of tools and procedures to get this consent.

For non personalized-ads without "at least" a "cookie banner", the days are counted too.

For non personalized-ads with implicit "cookie banner", it's not even sure this is compliant enough.

And what timescales are you envisaging for the trouble to occur, you mention "near future"?

[QuaterPan]

And what timescales are you envisaging for the trouble to occur, you mention "near future"?

For personalized-ads without explicit consent (EEA) before the ad request is placed. Google says on its site that there will be verification that publishers are correctly doing it, and if not, notifications will be sent. I assume reviews are beginning immediately, especially since Google has to show the EU that it's making the appropriate efforts to make things right.

Google should publish its complete consent system connected with the IAB framework in july, so after July, I think that publishers will have no more excuses at all, for not implementing the right consent mechanism (for personalized ads), so Google might be more severe after this tool is published.

For EU businesses , any lawyer can fill a complain about anyone at any time for not obtaining the explicit consent before a cookie is written. And in that case it's not a matter of regulator or EU coming after businesses , see the example of Germany ...

[nomis5]

For EU businesses , any lawyer can fill a complain about anyone at any time for not obtaining the explicit consent before a cookie is written. And in that case it's not a matter of regulator or EU coming after businesses , see the example of Germany ...

..

Definitely not. This is only the case in Germany, certainly not the UK or Ireland and I'm reasonably sure that this only applies to Germany. Please don't spread this total untruth anymore.

How quick Google will be to notify website owners that they are not complying with GDPR is a total unknown. And the rules they will apply to determine compliance or not is also a complete unknown. What they will do when they deem a site is not compliant is also totally unknown. I would assume a period of grace will will granted for the site to be compliant,

So much of GDPR is a total unknown that panic at this stage of the game is totally unwarranted. Granted, make some changes to your website to ensure that Google knows you are at least trying, that probably is a wise precaution.

But to spread panic that absolute compliance of regulations, which are at the best completely unclear, is simply wrong.

[surfgatinho]

For EU businesses , any lawyer can fill a complain about anyone at any time for not obtaining the explicit consent before a cookie is written. And in that case it's not a matter of regulator or EU coming after businesses , see the example of Germany ..

Sounds like a Getty letter to me. Thousands sent out - how many people ever taken to court...

[puente]

maybe google itself will decide to take care of the consent popup and related permission forms. if a site is just using adsense and no other services to cookie and track users then the cookies are there for google's use.