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.

[Yudee]

@Koan truth is if blogging is your passion it's no crime to earn a few buck out of it.. I started blogging because it was my passion, as for earnings every week I run series of experiments to see what works and don't. What ever works now with earnings may not last for long that's why those experiments are important. However I do same with traffic. Back to you wondering, you can try the same thing in a different way and also still start anything new that comes out from your mind. If in the long run the new one gives way better result you can push more of your attention to it


@Runfun yes they may use adsense as fill up, truth remains that they make something out of it. Most stores that sells different product do so because at the end earnings of individual product have a way of complimenting the seller at the end

[Ironside]

@LondonNE yeah, I can add my name to the long list of people who used to make quite a lot of money each month to or three years ago but nowadays I'm just into xxx each month. Strangely, my CPC and page RPM has recovered a little bit in the last few months but what's killing my earnings is the amount of clicks I get. I used to get anywhere between 60 and 100 clicks a day so along with 30p CPC I could be quite well for the amount of visitors I was getting on my relatively small site. However, am lucky if I get 25 clicks nowadays. Somebody else hit the nail on the head, people have moved on to social media when it comes to hobbyist type websites. My website is fish keeping in related armoires I used to get 3000 hits a day and getting about 1.5 K hit nowadays each day.

[Sissi]

Interesting settlement

[news.bloomberglaw.com...]


News
Google Settles AdSense Revenue-Sharing Class Action for $11M (1)
Posted March 22, 2019, 4:20 PM Updated March 22, 2019, 8:05 PM
By Perry Cooper and Alexis Kramer


Ad publishers sued for unpaid earnings
9,600 class members get cut of $8M fund
Google LLC will pay $11 million to disgruntled users of its advertising revenue-sharing service under a class settlement that won final approval March 21.

Ad publishers that host advertisements on their websites challenged Google’s AdSense program. They alleged the Alphabet Inc. company unlawfully withheld payments they earned when web users clicked on the ads.

The case is one of several that tech giants such as Google, Facebook Inc., and Twitter Inc. have faced over their advertising practices. Three such lawsuits...

[robzilla]

Not sure why that's news again. Isn't it the same settlement as this one [searchenginejournal.com]?

[papux]

Hello people!
I have noticed a "trend" lately. When my traffic is up my RPM and CPC goes down. But when my traffic is down my rpm and also my cpc is up. Never had i encountered this before, this is happening for me for at least one month now. Have you guys experienced this?

[AnAppleADay]

This behaviour has been observed for a long time. Look for Adsense Earning Ceiling for example.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[papux]

Thank you for that link.

[robzilla]

This behaviour has been observed for a long time

Quite a long time, in fact:

[The] fourteenth-century Syrian scholar Ibn Taymiyyah [...] wrote: "If desire for goods increases while its availability decreases, its price rises. On the other hand, if availability of the good increases and the desire for it decreases, the price comes down.

Supply and demand [en.wikipedia.org]

Don't buy into silly myths like an "AdSense Earning Ceiling". Instead, try to understand the program you're participating in.

[NickMNS]

@papux
I have observed what you describe. Basically there appears to be negative correlation between with traffic and RPM. I have a theory that doesn't involve earnings ceilings or the actions of other bad actors.

Basically there are two types of users that come to a website, Type 1 those that have the express intent to consume and engage what your website is offering, and Type 2, the users that are unsure. I theorize that the ratio of these two mutually exclusive groups of users changes with traffic level. Traffic increases are usually the result of an increase in ranking, this in turn increases exposure and as a result one will tend to attract a greater number of Type 2 users. They come, they see and they leave. They may click on an ad, but I believe that it is far less likely than with engaged users.

When your site ranks lower, the users tends to be looking for something specific, they may have already visited other sites and have now navigated to your link, that is appearing lower in the search results. So with the lower rank the ratio tends to favor type I users.

Since type 2 users come and consume content despite not being engaged, they increase the number of page view without increasing revenue and thus revenue per page view (or 1000 pvs) decreases. This is what is observed. But, the increase in traffic still increases the number of Type 1 users so net revenue still increases, but not a expected rate and despite the fact that the metrics decline.

The other thing that occurs is that as traffic increases so does the supply of impressions. If your are operating in a small niche with a limited number of high paying contextual based advertisers then these advertisers will no be able buy up the increase in supply, thus there will be an excess in supply that will be purchased at a lower price. (see Robzilla's post).

Combined these two effects and one could see a very noticeable trend.

The key to countering this, try to make your content as engaging as possible so as to capture the attention of those Type 2 users. You can also watch the ad quality, if it begins to drop reduce the supply with ad-balancer.

This makes me think of a third indirect effect, if ad quality suffers due to the increase in supply and lack of demand, then probability of the engaged Type 1 user seeing low quality ads increases, and this user that would normally be willing to click on an ad will immediately be turned off.

This is my theory, I alone am unable to test it, but it is testable given access to enough websites under the right traffic conditions.

[Sissi]

@nickmns
Your theory makes sense.
What I don t understand why an RPM which used to be x during the öast 5 years becomes since 3 weeks x/3.

[Mentat]

March ia over and no miracle :(
This Sunday is very bad on all fronts.

[Sissi]

Same in Germany and in France.
Adsense has got a serious problem.
Have tried to optimise:
- Changing ads testing all options.
- tried best performing ads
- auto ads.

Still going South.

A lot of inconstancies: while keeping some 3 digit RPM for some domains the overall negative earning trend is confirmed.

[Malanje]

Me too. Now I am starting to think what I'm gonna do. To maintain the domains or try to sell them.
[i.ibb.co...]

[Sissi]

Selling deleting and maintaining only the profitable domains.

Thanks adsense

[RedBar]

To maintain the domains or try to sell them.

Have any of you seen how many sites and names are for sale?

[dollarsound]

Hi @Malange, could you share the same report but add the page views and page rpm metrics to understand it better?
It looks like one of my sites.

[Mentat]

Who would buy a dead site ? :)
31 of March was worse than 1st of January, and this speaks clearly about the problem.

[dollarsound]

@mentat But yesterday was end of month and quarter, so it's not weird

[robzilla]

For anyone interested in a positive chart: [i.imgur.com...] (blue = earnings, red = pageviews, purple = RPM)

[System]

The following 2 messages were cut out to new thread by martinibuster. New thread at: google_adsense/4940669.htm [webmasterworld.com]
10:29 am on Apr 1, 2019 (utc -5)

[Malanje]

@dollarsound
Page views and RPM [ibb.co...]

@Mentat not a dead site, I would delete it, but a domain name.

[gatormark]

5.7% clawback for March

[Frost_Angel]

17% clawback
I've been trying since November to figure out the issue. I have plenty of space around my ads. I use ONE link unit. It's so frustrating.

[Wader]

U are good look at me :)

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Ironside]

11% clawback for March earnings. But at least my finalised earnings were in three digits for March rather than two for February. At least going in the right direction at the moment.

[Sissi]

0.2 % clawback because they are done on real time.
Yesterday plus 30 % than same day last week.
Made some changes

[Ironside]

@Sissi up until a couple of months ago my clawback was always less then 1% like you, however, in the last couple of months the clawback has increased to at least 10%. If it wasn't bad enough seeing earnings decrease by more than half in the last three years is like having salt rubbed in the wound when more money is taken out at the very end. The only upside I suppose is that my earnings have stabilised somewhat.

I was considering making a radical change to the platform of my website. My two main website are built on a Joomla! CMS platform. If it's not too difficult and complicated or expensive and thinking about converting my Joomla! over to WordPress to see if that makes any difference. I think WordPress have made more of an effort to optimise their templates towards Google AdSense. Anyway, it's worth a try, I don't think I'll do any damage by trying. Actually, it might be a breath of fresh air and a radical change might be all it takes to generate more clicks.

[Cralamarre]

@Sissi up until a couple of months ago my clawback was always less then 1% like you, however, in the last couple of months the clawback has increased to at least 10%.

I've been seeing the same thing. Traditionally my clawback has been less than 1%, but it's been over 10% since February. I've made no changes to my ad code, ad placements, page layouts, nothing. Everything is the same as it has been for a long time. Yet since February, my Invalid Traffic clawback has skyrocketed.

I've tried emailing AdSense to report the issue and ask them for any insight or advice, but they don't reply. At least I'm not the only one experiencing this.

I'm wondering if the problem isn't so much "invalid traffic" but maybe "invalid advertisers". Just seems strange that other publishers are reporting similar increases in clawback beginning around the same time.

[trebuchet]

For a long time my end-of-month clawbacks were always in the region of 2-3%. Now it's more like 5-6%. And like Cralamarre and others, I've made no radical changes to layout, ad positioning, margins, etc. I suspect it's just Google doing what Google does and steepening the criteria for valid traffic/clicks.

[Ironside]

Does anyone even use WordPress for their website? I'm seriously thinking about changing from Joomla! to WordPress because I reckon the layout options that WordPress provides for AdSense could possibly increase click activity