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.

[broccoli]

@robzilla Thanks - I must have missed this. I guess it’s sort of a relief to know I’m not going crazy and other people are seeing the same thing. It doesn’t explain why my website was worth 3x as much ad revenue for the same amount of traffic a year ago, but at least I know it’s not just happening to me!

[glitterball]

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.

That's exactly the same sector as me. I think what I'm seeing in the Placements options in Google Ads is the effect of Google Search favouring global mega sites over specialist destination sites. As traffic has declined for those specialist sites, they drop out of the Placement Websites list (due to low traffic), causing CPC to drop for those publishers.

[broccoli]

It’s starting to make sense now.

[EditorialGuy]

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

Yes and yes, although Ezoic also works with your existing AdSense ads. I don't want to take this thread off topic, so I'll simply suggest visiting Ezoic's Web site for more info.

Side note: No, AdSense isn't the money spigot that it was back in 2003 or 2004, but neither is the ad business generally. Programmatic media buying has had a big impact on ad rates. (I can remember when AOL's rate card showed CPMs in the three digits for some verticals, although I suspect that not many ads were sold at the official rate.)

[Selen]

I have no idea what this site is but research and credentials look serious; someone has done a long-term research on impact of Adsense (or, in general, "banner ads") on total long-term traffic. It seems the negative impact is about 12-15% per 9 months. Maybe some Adsense sleuths could digest it and present summary in an easier form; for now what I understand was this below.

The assumption was that if long-term traffic loss was less than 3%, it would be a positive financial decision to keep Adsense / banner ads, but the loss was much higher than expected.

Correcting for a flaw in the randomization, the final results yield a surprisingly large estimate of an expected traffic loss of -9.7% (driven by the subset of users without adblock), with an implied -14% traffic loss if all traffic were exposed to ads (95% credible interval: -13–16%), exceeding my decision threshold for disabling ads & strongly ruling out the possibility of acceptably small losses which might justify further experimentation.

gwern.net/Ads

[RileyX]

@broccoli

Been there done that. I would recommend trying a partner that uses header bidding and then run your adsense ads as a passback (using Google ad manager). I got screwed by Google last year when they suspended my account. I almost lost everything. Since then I've experimented with tons of different ad networks, like media.net. I would suggest signing up for a ton of different as networks then testing out each one to figure out who makes you the most money. Header bidding is something you should look into, Google ad manager will do that (free). There are some other options for header bidding but they'll cost you. Not worth it unless you're making a lot of money (openx). Until you figure out header bidding though you can setup waterfall ads with different partners, basically you insert code from one partner they get the chance to buy an impression then they pass it back to the code from your other partner and so on. Ideally if you found 3 different partners that pay well you would setup the ads to show the highest paying first. It sounds complicated but I promise you it's not and its definitely worth the time. For a lot of people that are dont know much about the advertising networks out there other than just running adsense (like I was a year ago) there are plenty of good alternative advertising networks. Typically an advertising network that manages your inventory will partner with bunch of different advertisers and pay you a percentage. I always try to get at least 70-80%. A lot of networks will also give you access to Google's ad exchange (a better, harder to get, version of adsense). This will eliminate the need of running anything as a passback since the fill rate will be close to 100%. The most common exchanges that buy inventory from what I've seen are criteo, conversant, and some others. You could sign up with them directly so you dont have any middle men but for smaller sites or if you just prefer to not go through all the hassle of dealing with a ton of networks individually (which is what I do) you could just sign up with one or two good partners that are already partnered with a ton of different exchanges and you're good to go. Another advantage do doing this is you have get some new advertising options like full page ads or different types of floating banners. Also, if someone manages your inventory they will work just as hard as you would to get maximum revenue. That being said, here's a couple really solid partners I've used that I would definitely go check out: Venatus Media, 33Across, The Moneytizer, Kiosked, Sulvo, Sovrn. Those should get you started. Now what you do once you have someone managing your inventory is you set a couple passbacks to your other partners then run your adsense as backfill. One disadvantage to running your ads with multiple partners is it will decrease your overall page load time. One great advantage is your money is diversified, you're not fully entangled with one partner. Another thing to note, splitting up your inventory like this instead of going 100% with adsense could even hurt your overall revenue, or it could make it better. You'll never know until you try it. My current setup uses waterfall ads with adsense as a passback. I make more money than I would running directly with adsense and I have access to most ad exchanges out there which is good for visibility. If an advertiser wants to buy ads on my sites then it should be pretty easy to do that. Diversity is always better, no matter the cost, I say that from experience. Hope this helps

Quick note: media.net is garbage

[RileyX]

I've been running Adsense for years. My account got suspended 1 year ago and I left Google and went to look at some other partners. Now I'm back on Adsense again and I can definitely say Adsense is performing very poorly compared to how it used to be. Doesnt really bother me though because adsense only counts for maybe 10% of my inventory (I did try running only adsense as an experiment and didn't notice any major differences in cpm). I feel like Google forced out a lot of people and as a result the competition is doing better. Somehow that makes me happy. LOL

[broccoli]

@RileyX THANK YOU SO MUCH for all the info in your post, I hadn’t even heard of most of these companies. I’ve found it so hard to find decent information on what’s out there or how to find alternatives, now I have something to go on!

[surfgatinho]

It does get harder every year but with some luck and flexibility Adsense can still work. Many of my older sites, which were labours of love, don't earn me a living anymore, despite the many thousands of visitors a day.

Now I have a few very good niches, all found by accident, that still provide me with an income well in excess of what I could earn doing anything else where I live.

I would love to be free of the insecurity that is Adsense - but at the moment it still pays far too well to ditch.

[Erku]

Hi everyone. What do you replace Adsense with?

[tangor]

Hi everyone. What do you replace Adsense with?

Hard work?

[Lagonda]

If I was to replace AdSense I would only replace it with direct sales.
But it always depends on whether you're attractive to an advertiser or not.

AdSense is a rare one size fits all.
To me, in my territory, there isn't anything like it.