July 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

Let's hope this month is profitable

[Ironside]

So far today things are looking quite promising although it's still very early for me. I've only had seven clicks so far today but my CPC has actually been rising and is now at 40p, I like that a lot.

[Runfun]

I just found out that there are several ads each page and almost after each refresh that shows a text 'loading' and it doesn't load anything. No wonder earnings are low but I can't see the source with my Google Publisher Toolbar.

[riccarbi]

From what I understood, with the GDPR (and talking about Google/Adsense) both publishers and Adsense are liable, so it's not surprising that Google is concerned.

Again, maybe you are living in the US or outside the EU and you don't understand the point, from a legal point of view, which is utterly complex and controversial. 
OK, let's imagine someone (anonymously?) informs Google that www.xxx.com is infringing GDPR in his/her opinion. What can Google do? If they close, ban, block the Adsense account linked to www.xxx.com, its owner could potentially bring Google to court in his/her country and ask them to demonstrate how and where he is infringing GDPR. Remember, this is a local court, and, though the EU authorities have tried to translate GDPR in all EU languages as best as they could, there are relevant differences in what a word, such as "informed consent" or "consenso informato" actually means in each country's legal system. 
So, the Italian branch of Google will be asked to go to court and, if it fails to demonstrate that www.XXX.com has actually infringed GDPR, pays a gazillion euros to compensate that website owner. Maybe, they'll win, but that will mean nothing for another website owner in Germany, France or The Netherlands. That will open a can of worms both for Google and publishers in all 28 (or 27) EU countries. Would someone be really keen to open that can? I don't believe so.

[Mentat]

GDPR is non-sense and the new "accept" framework fail to enforce the spirit of the law.

1. Dire predictions aside, GDPR didn’t kill ad retargeting (it’s growing) [digiday.com]

2. Why California’s new consumer privacy law won’t be GDPR 2.0 [digiday.com]

For me, the first week of July was dead.

[beerSEO]

July 5th is the day my RPM went drastically down and the CPC is looking like $0.05 and under. My traffic is going up and clicks are staying the same and/or going up with traffic. Wtf. No GDPR concerns for me either. Not going to panic just yet as here in the U.S. people may still be on vacation after the holiday, but that low CPC has me a bit concerned...some of the worst numbers I've seen.

[MayankParmar]

It's a new week and I'm still 35% down.

:(

[Dimitri]

I noticed :

- an increase of text ads. I reached a point were only 5% of my ads were text ads, then since a couple of days, this is more like 25% of text ads (with good earnings going with).

- when I returned online, I disabled personalized ads for EEA, but, when I check the advanced statistics by countries, I see that Adsense is still serving personalized ads to EU countries. In fact, when I take a country like Germany, my coverage is extremely low, and the few ads still being served are personalized ads only. How is it possible? Since it's Adsense identifying the country, this can't be a problem of geo-localization. Or may be if someone accepted Adsense's personalized ads "somewhere" else, then it applies to all sites displaying Adsense ?

[Grapetimes]

Did you make any changes to notice an increase in text ads?

How is everyone’s earnings so far for after the first week?

[Robbo55]

@Dimitri
You mentioned that the few ads still being served in Germany are personalized ads only
How do you find out the proportion of ads served in a particular country that are personalized?
I can work out how to see the proportion of ads to all countries that are personalized, and how to see a breakdown by country of all ads, but can't work out how to see the number of contextual or personalized ads served in a specific country
If you could let me know it would be a great help!
Thanks
Robbo

[emperor2]

After 10 days, any change in CPC and overall adsense performance?
Direct traffic slightly increased, search traffic decreased 10%, less clicks and lower CPC here.

[Ironside]

If things continue like this through July than I certainly won't match June's earnings. Just when you think things are improving it all starts falling to pieces around you.

[beerSEO]

Ditto. I'm still seeing -43% on a day-to-day and -54% week-over-week.

[Ironside]

So nice of AdSense to send me an email telling me that my most successful month was December 2013, now I'm even more depressed. :-)

[riccarbi]

If things continue like this through July than I certainly won't match June's earnings

Me too, and it will be for the first time in years...
Compared to July 2017, traffic is up, time on page is up, pages per session are up and earnings from AdSense are ... 20% down and extremely erratic, furthermore. IMHO this has nothing to do with GDPR, traditional online advertising seems to be doomed and probably it is.
I tried verything, change units' size, position, number, type; I got more clicks for less money, CPC is 30% down, so arguably advertisers are spending less on display advertising, as simple as that.

This would not that a a big problem for Google, since they can inject as many Adwords ad spaces as they want into their SERP (or, better, as many as a user can tolerate). This is just a web publishers' problem, a big, serious problem, Best way to cope with it is to progressively move from a display advertising monetizantion model towards something different, probably.

[deriklogov]

Looks like adsense stat stuck , anybody else ?

[riccarbi]

Looks like adsense stat stuck , anybody else ?

Not here, the only stat that is stucking is that of the earnings; yet, I fear that's not due to some kind of technical problem of the stat service...;)

[Runfun]

Here it's a problem with Google DFP, it's trying to load the pages but it can't but so far no influence on the revenue that I can see at my Adsense Dashboard.

[Cralamarre]

Every time I check my AdSense earnings, colorful balloons fly up the page and I think "Yes! I'm rich! I made it". And then I see my earnings, the lowest they've been in years, and I want to pop those damn balloons. Pop 'em with my bare hands.

[Mentat]

A frustrating moment for a celebration! I'm also hating those ballons.

[Ironside]

Yesterday was terrible, 12 clicks at 15p CPC equalled less than £2 in earnings. I don't think this month is going to be any good whatsoever. I would love to know how the big earners are doing and whether their $500,000 monthly earnings have dropped with the rest of us.

If you browse our website from a desktop then adverts look quite good and people will click on them. However, soon as you start browsing the same website from the screen and a smart phone I don't think the adverts are anywhere near as appealing so it wouldn't surprise me if everyone's earnings have decreased, even the big guns

[KaseyM]

~20% down across the board. AMP in particular is performing horribly.

[Runfun]

Here it's the best July ever (in 7 years) but that's probably because I didn't linked my Adsense account with Google DFP before :'-) I don't even want to know what I've missed the last year but I'm glad other ads and affiliates perform well.

[MayankParmar]

It's a good day after two weeks!

[beerSEO]

Made a bit of a come-back to normality yesterday. Today is off to a much more normal-looking start as well. To me, it appears they are testing a new click attribution model or something, because the CPC has been fluctuating much more in the past week than I have seen in years. My traffic and impressions are steadily increasing and the CPC was fluctuating with it, never seen it to that extent before. Something definitely afoot, at least for my sites.

[bugthinker]

Mine is "slightly" back to normal this July... hope it continues.

[Mentat]

LOL not, My AdSense revenue is lower this Thursday than last week and last week was 5th of July!

Adsense is in collapse, but Adx is dead!

[MayankParmar]

Today is off to a slow start. Yesterday was totally mind blowing.

[bugthinker]

same here.. it is a slow start today as compared to yesterday.

[Cralamarre]

This week was an AdSense disaster for me, down 19% yesterday compared to last Thursday. Today seems no different.

[trebuchet]

Yesterday was the lowest single-day CTR I've seen in 11 years with Adsense. Appalling.

That is all.

[Cralamarre]

I switched to a different EU cookie consent banner this week and thought maybe that had something to do with my lower earnings. But judging from the other comments on here, I guess not.