February 2019 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Jaideemaak]

---

System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4931822.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 2:40 pm on Feb 1, 2019 (utc -5)

---

You have to laugh. Eight clicks today for 9 pence. Six of those clicks were worth nothing and only two clicks actually paid any money. This type of thing happens every day - many clicks pay nothing and when a click does actually get paid it is for a paltry amount. My total Adsense earnings for the ENTIRE month of January 2019 were only slightly more than ONE average DAY'S earnings in December 2012. I actually stopped doing any more work on my web site a few months ago and will now start removing Adsense (again). It's completely dead and a monumental waste of time. I'm going to try my luck with YouTube, but it takes a while to get subscribers and watch time.

[gatormark]

Page RPM and CTR drop today and last night.

[Mentat]

Same situation here - payment very low :(

[leebow]

School holidays again now - that’s my adsense down for a week :(

[RedBar]

Am I missing some kind of holiday(s) in the entire world today?

My sites are dead, lowest-ever PVs for this time of day, I actually had to check to see if my server was down!

[robzilla]

Average weekend so far. RPMs a little higher than last week.

[Mentat]

Sunday was the worst day of 2019, as revenue.

[Runfun]

Last midweek was okay, improved visibility, blocked low paying networks but suddenly last weekend a CTR drop from nothing. It doesn't make sense but well what can we do?

I activated auto ads but just in case I want to deactivate it, how can I turn it off again?

[NickMNS]

blocked low paying networks

CTR drop from nothing

Hmmm, interesting... Reduce demand and prices fall, seems like the logical outcome.

AdSense is an auction based system, blocking low paying networks is of no use. The blocked ads, any blocked ads, are always replaced with even lower paying ads.

You do realize that Google/AdSense takes a 32% cut on all the ad revenue generated on your site, there is no motivation for Google to show suboptimal ads. Google is going to show the ads that are most likely to maximize it's profits. Google has likely spent considerable time and resources to ensure this. In this case, contrary to many other situation with Google, your profit maximization and Google's are aligned. I seriously doubt that you will be able to improve your earnings by blocking ads.

[Runfun]

If I take a look at the top 20 adnetworks based on impressions and 1 is paying a CPM of €0.07 and others €0.30 till €0.80 it seems logical that earnings should improve. It's not a top 10 network based on impressions, than I would be more with blocking. Just take a look at the networks at your websites and the differences are huge. And I have a website with approximately 200K ad impressions a day.

[donjon]

if you feel dizzy with page view is bigger than Impression. it's the same as happening to me! this is weird, I have never been like this before.

[edited by: donjon at 5:46 pm (utc) on Feb 18, 2019]

[NickMNS]

it seems logical that earnings should improve.

I don't really follow your logic.

Ad impressions are awarded based on the highest paying ads. If a network that is paying 0.80 Euro and it is not filling all the impressions, that is not because there are 0.30 Euro ads preventing more impressions. Its is because there is not sufficient demand for more impressions at that price point. If you want to show more ads, you drop the price.

For example you have a supply of 100 impressions:
Revenue to impressions will likely be distributed as follows:
100th = 5$
95th to 99th = 3$
85th to 94th = 1.50$
70th to 84th = 0.75$
50th to 69th = 0.50$
30th to 49th = 0.25$
1st to 29th = 0.03$

Blocking the networks that fill the impressions in the bottom of the distribution will not suddenly cause those impressions to be sold at higher prices. To the contrary, it will allow buyers bidding lower to win impressions that would have gone to higher bidders so the 0.03$ impression will now be sold for 0.02$. It is also very probable that all the other prices above will drop too, due to less competition. This is basic supply and demand economics.

If you want to see the distribution of prices in your account go to the "Reports" tab all the way to the bottom, the before last element is "Revenue Profile". This report shows the distribution of impressions by price point.

If you want to increase prices, there is only one way and that is to increase demand. Which is much easier said than done.

[NickMNS]

page view is bigger than Impression.

This is likely symptomatic of a coverage issue. That is, pages are shown to users but there are no ads shown on those pages.

[donjon]

actually what does google want? this makes me confused what to do, want to do something (like extreme SEO optimization) fear of making things worse. because honestly I don't know the problem came from me or from the Google itself.

[Runfun]

@NickMNS, thanks for your response and it makes sense. Well at this moment I've unblocked the two networks I had blocked but I keep blocking ads from advertisers that doesn't make sense at all for my website. For example, I've a website about finances and Thermofisher Scientific has thousands of impressions a week at my website... I'll try to keep blocking strange advertisers and hopefully there will be more improvement like last midweek.

[nomis5]

n this case, contrary to many other situation with Google, your profit maximization and Google's are aligned. I seriously doubt that you will be able to improve your earnings by blocking ads.

I couldn't agree more. That's been my belief for many years.

It also applies to almost all the tweaks and whatever so often discussed.

What's good for G is good for you and vice versa. Forget all the analysis crap, go 100% for increased pageviews. That is the key to increasing revenue.

[dollarsound]

From october to february RPM is 60% of what it's been for the last 5 years. No apparent reason. Everyday keeps dropping even more.
I got my revenue mainly from link ads.

[Runfun]

@NickMNS, CPM is up again and blocking adnetworks is something I'll avoid ;-) but I'll block advertisers who doesn't fit with my website.

[Cyril TechWebsites]

This year's RPM is just terrible! Last years the recovery after Christmass and New Year holidays was happening since the end of January/beginning of February, but this year RPM didn't recovered, it's just getting worse and worse, any signs that something is going to change. I'm facing with lowest RPM in years...

[v1nce]

+60% of my traffic is mobile and Link Units are my best performing ad. Since January, adsense revenue has declined by at least 50%. Not sure what to make of it?

[Mentat]

Link units can give you a lot of headaches and penalties, as they usually have a high accidental click rate.

[v1nce]

Mentat - I label all my link units and provide extra padding, while never putting them by any navigation or menu items. I have not found an ad unit that performs well on mobile besides these link units. I've also never had an adsense penalty. I maintain a minimal clawback/invalid activity percentage each month... well under 1% of revenue.

Any suggestions for monetizing mobile traffic?

[robzilla]

Oddly enough, February is actually ahead of January. Only by about 3% or so, but still. There's just not enough days in February.

[allhearts]

I have noticed that since about mid Feb, that CPC is going back down. Feb of 18 was a much better Month for me.

[dollarsound]

@mentat with link units you have less chances of invalid clicks, as the click that counts is the second one. First click doesn't generate any revenue. So, if the first click is accidental or not it doesnt matter because no advertiser is going to be charged

[dollarsound]

Has anyone noticed if the decrease in revenue matches an increase in AMP traffic? I mean, standard mobile traffic being replaced by AMP traffic. And AMP having much lower RPMs.

[Ironside]

It looks as though February 2019 is going to be the first month in probably 10 years where my monthly earnings won't even reach three digits, I'll just fall short if I don't get a few days with really good earnings.

I think I'm going to make some radical changes to my website. My main website also has a community forum. Ever since I changed over to a VPS never been particularly fast loading. I think this definitely affects how many people hang around waiting for pages to load. So I've decided to remove the forum altogether in the hope that just having articles will mean the website will load a lot faster. I might even change from CMS, thus doing away with the database altogether and just going with HTML/CSS. After all, if it's just a magazine based website that there is no need for a database. There is anyone know of a good place to get predesigned HTML/CSS templates that I can just make a few simple alterations to. I can't be bothered to start from scratch to be honest with you.

[Malanje]

@dollarsound
I guess there isn't a definitive answer for that. Till las year big updates I've got a higher RPM from those pages. After March 2018 I conducted an experiment on a few amp pages and find out that they had a lower performance than canonical html. But one must consider that usually the amp pages have a better position in g search, which may increase the number of visitors. Although it seems that if a visitor have an ad blocker active, g search results don't display links to amp pages (I did not make a full test).

[robzilla]

Early PIP this month. Maybe it's always 7 days before the end of the month, I haven't been keeping track.

[Runfun]

@Ironside, I've also a community/forum and if you want to take a look we could get in contact by PM. It's a combination of forum and a WordPress website.

[NickMNS]

@dollarsound

And AMP having much lower RPMs.

That is not my experience. I do see a lower RPM for AMP but the difference is marginal. CPC is the same.

One should keep in mind that AMP pages are only ever shown as a landing page (assuming your site is not AMP only) any subsequent navigation on the part of the user directs that user to a non-AMP page. The probability of a user clicking on an ad on the first page view is much lower than on second or third page. That is, once the user has begun to engage with the content that user is more likely to notice and click on ads. When one takes this into consideration one realizes that AMP RPM values are biased by this. In other words if you were to eliminate all the AMP pages and replace them with non-AMP pages and ads it is unlikely to increase one's ad revenue.