October 2018 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Mentat]

Last days of September 2018 were not very good, now let's see what October (Q4) will bring to the table.
For me, September 018 was a good month.

[WhoKnows111]

Rollercoaster for me... I had the best 3 day period ever about 10 days ago.

After that it dumped and the last days in Oct were some of the worst in the past 4 months.

[MayankParmar]

Lowest clawback ever! The final amount is almost the same, just a difference of a couple of dollars. So now September was 7% better than August.

[soloiptv]

june & September best months for me . 1st day from oct is very bad

[UpOnOne]

My Page RPM was cut in half last Tuesday and has remained there since. The only thing that I can see changed is that I received the "Mobile-first indexing enabled" email. Anyone else ever experience anything like this? Coverage, impressions and clicks are all still the same.

[ember]

If your clicks are the same per 1,000 impressions, then the lower RPM must be due to a lower EPC. If you are now showing up in the mobile index and getting more mobile traffic than before, your RPM is probably lower because generally mobile traffic pays less per click than desktop. A higher mobile CTR, though, often compensates for the lower EPC. Have you looked at your platform reports?

[frankleeceo]

October 1st, beginning of the month, beginning of Q4, beginning of the week - Monday, and a Jewish holiday, RPM is very very low as new spends are re-upped. I think it should get a 30%~50% boost by the end of the week.

[Mentat]

I hope you are right @frankleeceo
Monday was really bad...

[UpOnOne]

@ember, thanks for the reply. I just had a look at my platform reports. Traffic from mobile is the same as it was previously. Clicks per thousand has also remained constant. In the past, I have experienced slight decreases in Page RPM at the end of the month but never a 50% drop. This has resulted in a 50% drop in earnings. My User First report is still appearing and shows 3 green check marks. If I compare yesterday to last Monday, Page Views, Impressions, Clicks, AVV are all identical. Just my Page RPM and Impression RPM are 50% = 50% less earnings. Per my Ad networks report, the majority of my ads are still coming from Google Adwords. Coverage remains the same and all my traffic is from The US.

Fingers crossed frankleeceo is right.

[LondonNE]

Since I received an email about mobile first google search results last week earnings have dropped a lot.

My site is a wordpress theme and does change when viewed on mobile so I guess is responsive. I'm no tech expert but presume its not good enough?

Also still not on HTTPS as it decimated earnings before. Will this now be penalising me?

[justpassing]

Since I received an email about mobile first google search results last week earnings have dropped a lot.

What about the traffic? Earning and traffic have to be put in correlation before drawing conclusions.

My site is a wordpress theme and does change when viewed on mobile so I guess is responsive. I'm no tech expert but presume its not good enough?

It sounds okay. Since you are using an out-of-the-box tool (wordpress) , it's certainly adapted to be mobile friendly. In all events, you can verify what you site looks like , by using your smartphone, or using Chrome dev tool, which has a mobile device emulation. At the GSC, you can also see what your pages look like on mobile screen.

Also still not on HTTPS as it decimated earnings before.

What do you mean? You once switched your site to HTTPS, then switched back?

Will this now be penalising me?

May be not penalized but in the future "yes".

[ember]

UpOnOne, has your EPC dropped?

[UpOnOne]

@ember, yes my CPC/EPC appears to have dropped about the same amount.

[ember]

So the lower EPC is why your RPM has dropped. It could be that a large advertiser has dropped out or time of year or Google suddenly doesn't like the quality of your traffic, etc. When this has happened to me, I've just waited it out. My EPC dropped about 20% in August and then in September bounced back higher than before. October is looking about average. No idea why.

[Mentat]

For me adsense is low, but stable in October.
The problem is Adx, where I see a -30% dip...

[Cralamarre]

After a disappointing summer, September earnings for me were the best they've been in recent memory, and 20% higher than the same month last year.
October is starting off slower but not bad. I'd say average. But the beginning of the month is always the slowest time for me. Earnings generally pick up by the second week.

[MayankParmar]

Today is really terrible :(

[Nightmute]

30% ADX drops are fairly standard at the start of a new quarter.

[hindifun]

Earnings down to 40% on my site from last two days. Indian traffic.

[Mentat]

Monday was a non-working day in India.
Tuesday Germany stayed at home.
Wednesday was the day after the party...
Thursday is what? The adsense CPM is 30% lower...

[KaseyM]

Around 30-40% down so far this month. Seems unusually high even if it is start of a new q

[MayankParmar]

Yeah, it's terrible today as well. I'm gonna post terrible earnings comment every day for one week.

[frankleeceo]

I am observing a RPM and coverage bounce today compared to the first by about 30%.

[Mentat]

I was a huge decrease on CTR for the new text ads, with no button.

Now I see the Ad text + no button, or the button is grey and it says Open.
This is after the Start, green button experiment.

[CommandDork]

"I'm gonna post terrible earnings comment every day for one week."

Lol. On the path to 1,500 posts! :)

[EditorialGuy]

If your revenue has dipped recently, the Online Ad Revenue Index may show why. (Ad competition should heat up, and rates should go up, as we move deeper into the fourth quarter.)
[adrevenueindex.ezoic.com...]

[leebow]

That’s a cool chart EditorialGuy - but it shows 2018 so much higher then 2017 — and I don’t know anyone who is saying this year has been better then last year.

[EditorialGuy]

That’s a cool chart EditorialGuy - but it shows 2018 so much higher then 2017 — and I don’t know anyone who is saying this year has been better then last year.

The point of the chart (which is updated daily) is simply to illustrate what's happening with ad rates at any given point in time. If you can see (for example) that ad rates overall are taking a sharp dip at the very beginning of the fourth quarter, that could help to explain why you're seeing a dip around October 1. The correlation between overall ad rates and an individual publisher's earnings isn't perfect (there are too many variables for that), but knowing what's happening in the ad marketplace isn't a bad thing.

[frankleeceo]

I think ad rate does not necessary equal to total amount of revenue earned. I am seeing a trend really picking up this year that advertisers or platforms are now granular and picky about the ads that they serve, when and to who, as well as visibility that comes into play. This results in significantly lower coverage in instances, especially from frequency capping.

The result is that less ad served (lower coverage), while individual ads serve with higher RPM (Ad rate). Results in more or less overall revenue, (often times less, depending on the traffic).

The use of ad balance and header bidding plays into this overall trends too.

Sometimes straight data can be deceiving without knowing the backdrop. But the chart does help in noting very short time changes...aka from September 31 to October 1 :). Thanks EG.

[Mentat]

Nice graph, but what happened on the 3rd of October?