So long, farewell, AdSense, goodbye

[iamlost]

As of this Sunday I am dropping AdSense meaning that next month will see my last AdSense payment.

It was November 2003 that I added AdSense scripts as a test. A test that transformed my business model. By January 2004 AdSense was over 90% of revenue and what I had thought of as decent aff income was less than 10%. Without AdSense I would now, in 2019, be at about my web business presence of 10-12 years ago. AdSense, quite simply, changed everything. If you weren't around in those early days it is probably difficult perhaps impossible to comprehend. For me, AdSense was a revenue and business compounding gold rush.

Without AdSense there would not have been the means to grow as fast nor as far. Sites were built years ahead of initial plan, other languages added that could never have been justified prior, direct ad sales came a decade ahead of initial projection. That last spelled AdSense's demise: as I sold direct ad space from a page I removed AdSense as a conflict of interest, doing so allowed charging a slight premium as well. As of today AdSense is left on ~8% of pages and generates only a few percent of revenue. Not in itself reason to drop. However, not in any particular order:
* AdSense is my only third party script.
---is consistently the greatest render time constraint and the only one outside of my control.
---on mobile must be below first view screen to be consistently 100% available for view.
---is the lowest revenue source by any measure despite being whitelisted by some advertisers at a premium.

* there is a chemical::pharmaceutical content element to my niches, which pages I keep totally ad/af free so that there are no conflicts of info value and commercial interest. Further I accept no direct ad nor do affiliate presell, including coupons, for such products.
---AdSense has been these companies' access to my sites.
---it has been their whitelisting and competition that has kept AdSense hitting above expected revenue weight as ad block numbers diminished.
---I've long been conflicted by allowing this back door.

* GDPR and similar: AdSense is a privacy pita and the only one out of my control.

* the usage pattern of ad blockers means third party ads are at an increasing disadvantage.

* the increasing use of AdSense as a medium for bait and switch, malware et al hurts my sites' reputation as it impacts visitors' UX.

AdSense has allowed me to build beyond my wildest dreams.
AdSense has allowed me to outgrow AdSense.
I am ever so grateful.
Thank you.
Goodbye.

[Rndm]

AdSense has allowed me to build beyond my wildest dreams.
AdSense has allowed me to outgrow AdSense.
I am ever so grateful.
Thank you.
Goodbye

iamlost - Preach!

[Lagonda]

@broccoli

One thing I can say: there isn't a one size fits all theory for anything.

I have three AdSense sites, three completely different themes, three different layouts, three different audiences and user intents and...
Three completely different AdSense results and behaviors - RPM, CTR, pageviews, impressions, etc..

What works in one site doesn't work in another, I can't replicate a successful strategy in the other two.
You have to do A/B testing, experiment, experiment, experiment.
And sometimes, just like I said in another thread, you just have to give up and start over again in another category/theme/style.

[AnAppleADay]

>And sometimes, just like I said in another thread, you just have to give up and start over again in another category/theme/style.

This is a strategy for MFA sites. Sorry, I run a serious community, the value of which has been derived from the topic and the visitors in the past. These MFA sites are part of the problem.

[Lagonda]

I too run a serious community.
But, if it doesn't pay me to, I won't be keeping it for long, except if it's a hobby.

There's nothing MFA about this.

[JS_Harris]

I used to think Adsense was great on pages that I could not sell space on directly but I was wrong, or perhaps those days are in the past.

My best content is often not product related and so there is little to sell from them. The ad value is low but the visitor value is very good. Placing adsense on these pages shouldn't lower my overall ad metrics(and payout) but it does with adsense. You can't just default to adsense everywhere anymore. It's best not to have ads at all on some pages that you can't find a direct advertiser for.

[tangor]

Adsense has become chump change ... perhaps enough to cover hosting costs and DNS fees (annually) ... but expecting more than a Big Mac, Large Fries and a Drink once a month is becoming problematic.

Still, for the newbies and beginners, it is a way to monetize their sites, and in that regard still has some value.

But the "gold in them thar hills" has already been mined, YEARS AGO, and g is hoarding all the profits from here on out.

[trebuchet]

I suspect there's still gold in the Adsense hills but it's now being mined by the big boys with industrial diggers, high-tech processing equipment and consultant geologists. Most of us are still relying on picks, pans and metal detectors.

[broccoli]

@Malanje

I read that there were/are a number of low paying networks that didn’t/don’t use SSL for their adverts, I have no idea if that could have reduced bid pressure on my site.

I don’t necessarily think it was switching to SSL in itself that caused the problem. I read a lot of stuff about how easy the switch to SSL was and how my site would recover in a couple of months. The process was much harder than that, and whilst my traffic did recover, my income did not, so something about the change permanently afffected my adsense RPM.

I believe it is because I had to move the urls for my pages off subdomains. I think I may have had advertisers who had targeted my urls for advertisements, and whilst Google Search eventually carried the signals across to the new urls, Goole Adsense didn’t, so I lost my advertisers. I wish I had seen some warnings about this before I made the move. I wouldn’t have done it.

[Malanje]

In the event that I am correct about my observations, it is something that cannot be changed in the current state of Google monopoly. We Have to wait for users to get tired of being fooled or become more enlightened and change their habits.
(Thank you Bing Translator for helping me)

[MrSavage]

The changes (negative) in Adsense come out of ad blockers. Not addressing that ultimately crushed the program. It's why Google turned to their own properties. That in turn changed their strategy with Google search and why our sites largely turned into second class (or worse) citizens. For a large part, we just provide info to scrape. The ad runs the ship. The start of all this, traffic loss and the algo changes came when Google realized the platform was dying. Follow the money. It's also why we were subject to ugly ads and experimentation. It's because most of us didn't matter and weren't/aren't part of the future. It's called fallout. I knew this when they decided to turn the SERPS upside down. Our sites only mattered when our ads mattered.

[iamlost]

Follow the money is good advice. There have been several brutal kicks to Google's business model especially since 2014 and they have definitely been scrambling and flailing about in response.

The seed change in ad blockers is their being now built in as browser defaults. And much of the rise of ad blockers from individuals to browsers was driven by abuse by third party networks including Google.

Of course that still begs the question of why so many publishers can't/won't change their revenue model(s). Some habits can kill you.

[tangor]

Adblockers came as a response to abuse ... can't fault that. Meanwhile, adblockers are actually effective and g is beginning to feel the pinch.

[Selen]

Ad blockers is one thing, but ad spending shift is a much faster process. It could really mean nothing but lower Adsense RPM.

Advertisers are starting to shift spending on search ads from Alphabet Inc’s Google toward Amazon.com Inc., a sign of how the online retailer is capitalizing on becoming the top destination for consumers’ product searches. WPP PLC, the world's largest ad buyer, spent about $300 million on behalf of its clients on Amazon search ads last year, and about 75% of that money came from Google search budgets, according to people familiar with the matter. It spent between $100 million and $150 million on Amazon search in 2017, the people said. Omnicom Group Inc., another Madison Avenue giant, said between 20% and 30% of the dollars its clients spent on search advertising last year went to Amazon search ads, with the majority of the cash shifted from Google search budgets. The New York ad company spent about $1.2 billion on U.S. search ads last year, according to people familiar with its ad spending.

While Google has long been the dominant player in online searches of all sorts, some 54% of people looking for a product now begin their search directly on Amazon, a jump from 46% in 2015, according to Jumpshot, a research firm that collects data from 100 million devices.

WSJ - wsj.com/articles/amazons-rise-in-ad-searches-dents-googles-dominance-11554414575
business-standard.com/article/companies/amazon-s-rise-in-ad-searches-dents-google-s-dominance-119040600764_1.html

[broccoli]

The thing that annoys me about this ad coverage / ad blockers situation is that it's been brought about by sites that are too ad heavy. I've spoken to friends who use ad blockers, and they've generally installed them because of big news/gossip/clickbait sites with very slow loading, javascript-heavy pages with poor user experiences. Asynchronous loading isn't even a help - it actually annoys the heck out of some people because of the way it jiggles the page around during the load.

The reason these sites are so ad heavy is because they were created by a venture capital bubble, and then they discovered that actually internet ad revenue isn't that great and their businesses can't support the number of staff they need, so they try to claw back their losses with ridiculous numbers of ads. There is one news site in the UK that I won't even visit anymore because on mobile it's one paragraph, one rectangle ad the whole way down.

My site isn't ad heavy or abusive and never has been, yet my ad coverage in the last year has dropped down to 70%. There are days when I browse my site in the UK and there are literally no ads on the pages. I don't have an ad blocker installed. Adsense seems to have taken the position that they'll drop ad coverage for everyone, or perhaps aim at the smaller sites, even the sites who are carefully following the rules, instead of targeting the abusive sites. The EMD site that Google pushed to the top of my niche last year has a very abusive ad experience, but they still get 100% coverage. What's going on here?

A lot of my income loss seems to have come from pay-per-view display ads and ads from big brands. Where did they go? Did they all move to Amazon, or did they move to AdX or other networks or what?

I'm at a loss - all I can think to do is try ezoic and try changing my business model and build and sell an app version of my site to shield myself from the whims of Google's management.

[iamlost]

The 'big' ads have been moving away from Google in numbers for approximately 5-years. And those that remain are primarily focussed on Search ads rather than Display Network ads. Given that Display (AdSense) is the low end, least value half it was the first cut back, more recently as other venues/networks/options are being tested even Search campaign budgets have been diminishing as focus is moved.

Here at WebmasterWorld the litany of publisher complaints about mobile and amp and in app revenue results has been nonstop. This is not to say that Google itself is making less money or that a good many sites still do very well with AdSense (even though I stopped AdSense end last month it was primarily due to going direct and relative benefits; see OP) rather that the signs of change have been increasingly evident.

And the vacuum left is increasingly filled by spam and malicious players. Ad pricing has fallen, particularly in Display, such to allow more and more bottom feeders sufficient ROI.

Add to that my own opinion that Google search results have been also of diminishing quality for many years (2013: advent of 'Hummingbird' and especially 2016: 'RankBrain') as Google is desperately pushing it's existence as a portal, a one stop info shop ever harder in a web world they are increasingly seen as the ultimate 'Big Brother' bad guy. The only things online making them look 'better' by comparison are the infantile data/privacy behaviour of FB and the bully/counterfeit behaviour of Amazon.

The question is not so much what about Google, they are what they are, rather, given all the years of angst, of rollercoaster or sharp or steady decline, what about 'you'?

I have colleagues that are still doing absolutely wonderfully great with both Google referred organic search traffic and Google AdSense revenue. I also have colleagues that have basically seen their business model cut off at the knees and decided to get out of webdev entirely. As usual there is no one size fits all, no all encompassing catastrophe nor gold rush, however the Google 'ecosystem' is certainly under increasing stress, undergoing increasing rate of change... giving ever more urgency to the critical basic question of how best to adapt... because doing nothing aka business as usual is eventually equivalent to sticking one's head between one's legs and kissing one's *ss goodbye.

Note: there is also no one size fits all solution either. There have, however, for well over a decade, been posts offering members' explications and adaptations. Research, consider, test... and, hopefully, succeed and prosper.

[tangor]

Eggs in one basket: potential for disaster.

Man with two horses can go farther than man with one horse.

Man who works for himself, builds future. Man who exists on what others have done is a tenet.

All of this g stuff is just history REPEATED. When a company reaches market saturation quality goes down, profits become thinner, and shareholders demand "more".

[MrSavage]

One internet. One portal to "discovery". Pay to play isn't part of what Adsense is. Shame on us for depending on the one internet. Bing's internet is .0001% of the market and I'm being generous. Nobody deserves blame for building a website for the internet and through no fault of their own the internet left town and was overtaken by one player. Most people staking claims about go outside of Google for traffic sit on website that were established during a time when there was an open web/internet. In other words, just a bunch of hot air. Advice that deserves a big A asterisk beside it. I built a website to be found in search but I take no shame in thinking that the web wouldn't consist of one player who is building something to funnel and divert people off of the "web". It's the reason why people are discussing Adsense death. I basically dismiss wisdom that comes from kings sitting on land their acquired when land was free. Now the kings have the advice for everyone about acquiring land when now land costs money. A time that those kings seem to know nothing about.

[trebuchet]

The 'big' ads have been moving away from Google in numbers for approximately 5-years. And those that remain are primarily focussed on Search ads rather than Display Network ads.

And if you want evidence of that, just in Adsense's custom search. My RPMs for search are through the roof while RPMs for display ads are through the floor (and halfway into the cellar). If there was a way to exploit this, we could do it, but alas there is none. Joe User is not going to use your custom search unless he (a) happens to be on your site, and (b) is looking for something specific.

I built a website to be found in search but I take no shame in thinking that the web wouldn't consist of one player who is building something to funnel and divert people off of the "web".

While I don't disagree, it was only ever going to end up here. Google is a corporate behemoth and it is doing precisely what corporate behemoths do: leveraging publishers, advertisers and users for its own benefit. The big end has been doing this since the gilded age of robber-barons, and probably before. The 'do no evil' malarkey is about as sincere as 'arbeit macht frei'. The publishers-as-partners spiel is said warmly but with one big hand around your genitals. It is what it is, and it was always going to be what it is.

[goodoldweb]

Today's Adsense = chicken feed. Most sites are likely to not cross the $100 payment threshold after more than a year or more. That's how bad Adsense has become, often paying 1 or 2 cents per click if at all, an insult really.

Too many bad/exploitative algorithmic changes, too little money. Off they've gone.... a long time ago.

[IanCP]

Most sites are likely to not cross the $100 payment threshold after more than a year or more.

Yes well I do significantly better than that, the problem for me has never really been AdSense itself but Google's stranglehold on search. Much of my traffic comes from bookmarks, inbound links [although we are all literally dying off], and other links often appearing in discussion forums.

Having said that, as many in the print media, even online media will tell you - advertising dollars are now being spent elsewhere. Obviously that new spend place is far more productive. That has a massive impact.

[goodoldweb]

Having said that, as many in the print media, even online media will tell you - advertising dollars are now being spent elsewhere. Obviously that new spend place is far more productive. That has a massive impact.

No argument there. But try advertising via adwords on the very same sites i mentioned and you'll be asked for alot more cents per click then the 1 cents they used to pay me.

Google simply lost my trust.

[glitterball]

Following this thread got me thinking that I might be able to take advantage of some ridiculously cheap advertising on my (Adsense) competitor websites. However I have found it to be absolutely impossible to get my ads to appear on those sites. None of the on-topic websites that I'd like the ads to appear on appear in the placement list, and it seems that Google just doesn't want advertisers to be able to target specialist on-topic websites.
Google Ads (as someone pointed out here somewhere) is all about search and 'interest-based' ads.

[goodoldweb]

^ and this no longer seems to work well for the advertiser or the publisher, while the middlemen keeps milking hard a dyeing cow...regardless.

[EditorialGuy]

AdSense has continued to work decently for us, and it's been producing more revenue than ever since we began using Ezoic as an ad-testing and implementation platform last July.

No two sites are alike, and what works for publisher A may be a bust for publisher B. Ad networks are like affiliate programs: You've got to test and be willing to find new solutions when the old ones no longer seem effective.

[tangor]

True words! ^^^^

Especially for those reliant on third party adverts.

Direct sales, on the other hand, puts the onus on the site to do the hard work to find advertisers and then milk their cow!

Making money has always been about those willing to work. G and adsense changed that, plopping cash promises with cut and paste ... and it worked for a number of years. Just long enough to spread the concept of third party advertising with a click and then g ratcheted up their side of the machine. And there's no going back.

Those will making decent income should make plans NOW for when that changes, and it will. Corporations generally deal with other corporations and the small fry are left withering on the vine.

The likelihood of others (third party ad services) coming in the fill the void will go the same way of the ad companies which bloomed in the 1940s-60s for print media and then died a long and lingering death as the MAD AVE giants just got larger (and then started eating each other).

Nothing new here. History is repeating. And history also suggests that at some point the workerbees find another way, another place, to start the madness all over.

Only difference between the print advertising industry and the internet advertising industry is HOW QUICKLY machines can do the process.

[broccoli]

They did it again. In the last 72 hours I regained a lot of the traffic I lost during the March core update, and they’ve correspondingly dropped my RPM to keep my earnings in the same ballpark. My CPC is now at 4 pence. I guess at least it can’t get much lower?

I know it can take adsense a couple of weeks to settle down after a traffic change, but what has been happening since this time last year is after every fluctuation my RPM drops and simply doesn’t recover.

@glitterball

it seems that Google just doesn't want advertisers to be able to target specialist on-topic websites.
Google Ads (as someone pointed out here somewhere) is all about search and 'interest-based' ads.

Well that at least provides me with a clue. I always did really well from topical ads and much less well from interest based ads. I used to get ads for movies and games, and they fitted really well with my audience. If they’re making it harder for advertisers to target websites that would explain a lot.

[robzilla]

They did it again. In the last 72 hours I regained a lot of the traffic I lost during the March core update, and they’ve correspondingly dropped my RPM to keep my earnings in the same ballpark.

Have a look at: [webmasterworld.com...] (NickMNS's post in particular)

[Lagonda]

As I said earlier...

A report from Kantar has shown that consumers are suffering from ad fatigue, with bombardment and oversaturation putting the UK ad industry at risk.

Source: [thedrum.com...]

[EditorialGuy]

it seems that Google just doesn't want advertisers to be able to target specialist on-topic websites.
Google Ads (as someone pointed out here somewhere) is all about search and 'interest-based' ads.

We get a fair number of obviously site-targeted ads, probably because the most popular sections of our site are about destinations (meaning the ads are reaching people who are actively researching where to go, what to do, and how to spend their money). Most of the ads are from big advertisers that understand the value of destination targeting, but some are from smaller destination-based businesses that are selling a pricey service and have figured out how to use site-targeted AdSense ads effectively.

[nomis5]

@EditorialGuy, care to expand on your comment below?

AdSense has continued to work decently for us, and it's been producing more revenue than ever since we began using Ezoic as an ad-testing and implementation platform last July.

For example did Ezoic identify where best to put ads? Do Ezoic have their own ad system etc.?