March 2019 AdSense Earnings & Observations

"Google clawed it all back. I knew it was too good to be true."

[Cralamarre]

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System: The following 6 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4934778.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 2:58 pm on Mar 1, 2019 (utc -5)

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Well, looks like the big improvements I saw in the days leading up to Valentines Day were all for nothing. Google clawed it all back. I knew it was too good to be true.

[breeks]

I am up about 20% over last year but way down from the "glory years". if I divide my lifetime revenue by the years I have been using AdSense it still looks pretty good. If I look at the last couple of years not so good.

[CommandDork]

I sometimes envision getting that lifetime revenue as a lump sum today and thinking what I would/could do with it :)

But same with me, last couple of years, not so good. Definitely a downward trend across the board - despite implementing site changes.

The audience and online advertising strategies have all changed so much to the detriment of the publisher.

[Runfun]

Just followed a discussion online and someone said that Adsense is only valuable as fill up for left overs. The earnings are terrible low and they said to focus on affiliates. For example I earn with only ONE lead or sale the same amount at a day than with 100,000 ad impressions a day for Adsense. So I've already about 10% of the impressions for affiliates. I'm using header bidding also but I'm really thinking about reducing Adsense to a maximum of 25 to 30 percent. It's not worth those few pennies and all the energy to optimize when Adsense is dying.

[Selen]

I allow earnings to be 100% via Ad Balance. I've just checked Ad Coverage for a text/image banner (responsive, including all sizes): only 18%. It means that out of 100 visitors, 82 will see a blank spot, no ad.

( It makes me wonder why people still use ad blockers when Adsense blocks itself at a respectable 82% rate. )

[NickMNS]

@Selen

only 18%. It means that out of 100 visitors, 82 will see a blank spot, no ad.

This is true, but it is not the case for everyone, and you need to understand the subtleties of how the ad-balancer works and what this means for you.

In your adsense account there is report called revenue profile it's the last or second to last on the list of reports. It shows a plot of distribution (cumulative) of revenue by the number of impressions. Along the Y-axis you have revenue in RPM and along the X-axis number of impressions (or % of total impressions). So for say $0.10 RPM impressions you should have like 95% of all impressions (left hand side of the plot), then at $0.50, you'll have 30% of impressions and so on, your top earning impression will be on the far right. The typical shape of such a plot is a curve starting low at the left and climbing to the right.

What the ad-balancer does is truncates this graph at some point along the x-axis. If you set your revenue to 100% really it is 99.5%, it goes along the x-axis to find the number of impressions that match 99.5% of revenue, say that $0.12RPM. It then removes any impressions that pay less than 0.12$ RPM. The next day it will re-estimate this price floor and re-adjust, it may shift the price to $0.13 because now there is more demand.

When the 100% (or 99.5%) revenue mark is a 82% of impressions what this signals is that your curve is no longer a curve, but a pretty close to being a flat line. Under these conditions, the ad-balancer is essentially ineffective, because it will be extremely difficult for it to predict an accurate cut-off price. In other words it will have trouble determining if the ad should or should not be blocked because nearly every ad lies on the threshold.

The other thing it tells you is that there is very little demand for your inventory. Basically, nearly all your ads are low value and potentially spammy ads. You may want to look into your content to find a way to attract new advertisers.

[Selen]

Thank you, I didn't know about this setting, will check...

[LondonNE]

I only joined Adsense last year so seemed to have missed the glory years.

What % has it dropped for people? 50%? 80%?

[Mentat]

-80% is about right.
Now the remaining 20% is used to stay a float...
The last update killed the mains visited pages and gave some traffic on some older pages, but still a strange -20% in traffic.

[trebuchet]

What % has it dropped for people?

My total earnings have dropped 60-70% in six years. That's despite significant increases in content and traffic, as well as improvements to layout, UX, etc.

With the growth of the internet and the rise of other digital platforms and channels, a downturn in the profitability of Adsense was inevitable. Not sure I expected it to fall off a cliff though.

[Sissi]

50% since 2006
from middle 3 digit daily to low 3 digit daily
probable sources of trouble:
-Too many MfA publishers.
- SEO major changes to mobile responsive websites + move from http to https.

[Sissi]

Remember the times with parking our domain names we used to double Adsense revenues (including Adsense for domains at that time).
Same with IDNs useless domain names were sold for 5 digits.
In the times of social networks, " websurfers" would not click on our ads, save if they are looking for an urgent solution (they are still some niches for this type of keywords)

[Whatagreatdayitis]

My earnings have fallen by over 50% since 2015. It just continues to get a little worse year over year. I blame Facebook and other social media for taking eye balls away from the site. Also, with the rise of mobile traffic, visitors to my website just aren't as committed to spending time there. There is very little value in mobile traffic, especially if it's coming from outside the U.S.

I used to pull in an amount of revenue that would have allowed me to quit my job. Now it's less than half of that; meanwhile, my expenses remain about the same if not higher. That hasn't changed. I'm still contacted by every rinky-dink vendor or webmaster who wants to work with me.

[Wader]

So, we can or remove adsense or use something else. Today i put 1 ads from propeller ads and i can say that google is still 100x better than propeller... So i can assume thag google know that so they lowering revenue beacuse they are still no1

[ember]

A 40% drop since the early days but still providing a living. I blame social media, too many websites out there, ad blindness, smarter visitors, the novelty of the web has worn off, etc. Just need Adsense to hold out a couple more years and then I plan to retire. Yah!

[Sally Stitts]

@NickNMS
Holy Bazoombas.
I always use Safari on Mac, because I like it the most, BUT ...
THERE IS NO Menu Scroll Bar on the left side of the screen, as there is in Chrome.
Which means I NEVER SEE anything after - "Verified Sites", such as all that follows -
Served AD Types
Ad formats
Ad behavior
Ad sizes
Creative sizes
Targeting types
Bid types
Ad networks
Experiments
Ad sessions
REVENUE PROFILE, and finally
Events.

So, Nick, thank you very much for pointing this out.
It looks like I am forced to cozy up with Chrome, but I HATE IT, because it opens everything in a new tab.
I always want a new window, always, always, always. That's how Firefox and Safari function, since the beginning of time.

I tried to get Chrome to always open in a new window, but after MANY HOURS, I gave up.
I couldn't make it work. To me, this is a HUGE ISSUE, which Chrome does not even consider.
Always giving me what THEY WANT, and not what I WANT, is a GIGANTIC PI$$ER.
.
Back to your discussion -
My curve starts out around $5 on the left, and goes up to about $40 on the right, with my 50% point at around $10. Is this good or bad? I have no idea. My ad balance is set at 97% earnings and 67% potential ads. I'm trainable. What should I do?
My primary objective is to limit cr@p ads (untargeted ads), not maximize income.
Thank you to anyone, who can give me a clue.
.

[Sissi]

Lowest Sunday since 2005
And absence from any feedback from Adsense.

[AnAppleADay]

Never give up!

[Sissi]

Lol !

Seriously I can't believe that no one is visiting my pages during 5 hours according to Adsense
Other tools are contradicting Adsense stats.

[Gracie]

My click penalty has been lifted again and I'm back to typical earnings yippee... But I suspect it will be back in approx 5-7 days...

[Mentat]

Is like everyone is outside or it’s Easter...
Low traffic, low payment, low...

[Runfun]

Frustrating industry with a monopoly of Adsense and for example Media.net not even responding on a mail from me.

I'm literally improving weekly and stats of visitors keep rising on the long term. I've about 2K unique visitors a day during weekends, 4K unique visitors during midweek. Today 25K ad impressions with Adsense and it earned me €11 LOL!

Just like yesterday worst weekend in years and when CTR is improving the CPC is falling. When CPC is rising the CTR is falling. It almost seems to be scammy and it's not worth the effort. I've switched more impressions to affiliates this weekend because Adsense seems to be over. I've affiliates that earn me €30 to €50 each... one lead earns more than about 100K ad impressions of Adsense ROFL.

[dollarsound]

Just to make sure we are comparing apples to apples. When you calculate that drop in performance, are you using total revenue, impression rpm or page rpm?
I think the more objective metric is impression rpm, as total revenue might be affected by total traffic, and page rpm by the number of ad units in the site. Impression Rpm just depend on how well you had optimized Adsense or variations in CTR or CPC.

[AnAppleADay]

Down to a link block and a normal slot. The rest is now sold through direct sales. Works well. Quad CPM by direct customers. All customers who previously advertised with Adwords, but now prefer to pay more, but save the website. So it pays off, what has meant many years of work and by Google for increasingly inferior were considered. If I manage to completely replace Adsense in six months, there will be a big party.

[Yudee]

So many negative statements, and for the first time I have decided to say something.. I started blogging seriously on November 2017 today ll make it a year and 4 months. So far I have made over 4000 USD. March has been my best shot as my earnings is over 1000 USD.. Traffic is increasing day by day. Tho cpc is low at 0.06 but earnings is high. I am saying this to encourage others most big site uses adsense and I don't see them dropping it in the long run.. Let's keep striving and as well invest what we earn so that our complains can reduce. Thanks so far for your updates

[Cralamarre]

I've been seeing a big increase in AdSense earnings over the past few days, largely due to a sudden increase in UK earnings. However, a similar thing happened last month where my UK earnings suddenly increased in the days leading up to Valentine's Day, and Google ended up clawing all it back at the end of the month. So while it's nice to see the numbers in my AdSense report, I'm holding off on celebrating until I see what happens with this month's clawback.

[koan]

Thanks Yudee, at some point you're left wondering if it's worth to invest any more time and effort into an independent site or even start something new, so it's good to read that some people are experiencing income growth.

[NickMNS]

@Cralamarre,

I'm holding off on celebrating until I see what happens with this month's clawback.

What you should be doing is checking your access logs to try and find the culprits that are click bombing you so that you can block from the site.

[Cralamarre]

@NickMNS,
I don't think I'm being click bombed. I'm not seeing an unusually high number of clicks. I'm just seeing a higher than normal page RPM.

Yesterday, my total clicks for the day, compared to the previous Sunday, were down 3%, and my Page CTR was down 5%. Yet my CPC was up 47% and my total earnings for the day were up 40%.

[Wader]

can u explane this :P [prntscr.com...]

[Runfun]

@Yudee, tell us a few big websites who are using Adsense because most don't or are using it as a fill up.

@Dollarsound, when I'm complaining it's about the CPM so not with less visitors less revenues. True the years Adsense wants you to make improvements but for what? To compensate the decline in CPM/CPC?