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.

[engine]

Sorry to hear you're moving away from AdSense.

That's a very good assessment of it over the years, and yes, at the outset, it was fantastic. Today, it's become much tougher.
The alternatives frustrate me more than they offer opportunities, but I haven't yet given up.

[vordmeister]

Youtubers feel like the new Adsense. You can see them doing just the same as we did thinking 'wow' you can get real money from this. Adsense helped me out a lot too, and the internet is hopefully better for that as some thing stuck..

[azlinda]

I removed the last AdSense ad from my site today. It was a feeling of great relief. I also removed Google Analytics and any other vestiges of Google that I could find.

[tangor]

Some of us moved away from adsense years ago as being more trouble than it was worth. That said, in the early days adsense was the bee's knees and many fortunes were made (and lost).

[iamlost]

The defaults for both ads and aff marketing have long been third party networks. Over time their offerings have increasingly been diluted and hampered.

My advice is to build as varied and large a traffic flow as possible using the defaults while looking to replace them with direct ad sales and direct affiliations as traffic quality/quantity allows. Start with local advertisers, then regional and finally national/international as appropriate. Yes, it is more work as marketing is required, however the returns can be high multiples of what the networks offer.

Of course one also has to offer something other than what the networks offer as well; creativity and imagination and get well outside the typical ad block for best results.

Unless the networks shift to APIs - which will probably mean they drop most of their publishers - I suspect ad/af networks as we know them will be going if not gone within 5-years. That Google is shifting to amp in email is the latest signal of the coming end of times :)

[IanTurner]

Bizarrely in the last week my Adsense has improved significantly. So much so that it is back on a par with my other providers and may be taking ad space back in the coming months.

[tangor]

Sadly, adsense is playing catchup too little, too late. G milked the poor cow so severely the farmers finally put her out of her misery.

[RedBar]

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

I have just finished removing AdSense from the remainder of my sites today, Saturday, I logged-in and saw this post.

I have no idea what happened with the last algo update however since the 13th March 2019 AdSense has been totally pointless for me. Sites that were making pennies per day yet accumulated enough for a payout every other month have suddenly flatlined yet the ads I am seeing all seem to be ok.

There is no affiliate stuff in my industry therefore I'll now be totally ad free.

[Selen]

I can confirm a similar pattern like RedBar. Yesterday, I got 4 clicks on Ad Links Units, that paid $0.04 total ($0.01 per click). It has never happened before. So a visitor had to click twice (Ad links require two clicks) to make me $0.01. It could be some serious calculation bug. Is it possible for an Adwords advertiser, even in low-budget countries, to pay like $0.014 per click?

[edited by: Selen at 4:14 pm (utc) on Mar 30, 2019]

[RedBar]

Is it possible for an Adwords advertiser, even in low-budget countries, to pay like 0.014 cents per click?

Without a doubt I have had that on a regular basis, I once actually had 16 clicks for 0.04 cents and they were not all from the same person nor country ... I can't imagine what has that low a value other than online gaming of some sort ... My sites are not about gaming whatsoever however I have regularly seen game ads seemingly as a default ad.

[Selen]

Well, I'd suggest and hope that you keep Adsense on at least one of your sites to keep us updated. Maybe one day the CPC will shoot to $5 a click in your industry::

[RedBar]

For the moment I shall be retaining one unit at the end of each page on one specific website however I don't hold out any hopes for anything insofar as G is concerned, they've decided in which direction they're going and I don't feel it has absolutely anything to do with regular websites regardless of how relevant or good they may be.

Several global sites in my industry are considering locking down their sites to valid registered trade visitors only which is something I have been considering ever since their image theft of a few years ago.

[ember]

Still earning a living from Adsense.

[IanCP]

As I have said so often, I don't have a problem with AdSense - just Google search - which has improved significantly over the last five months.

[explorador]

Good luck on your journey, yes I can relate to each and every single point you posted. Adsense still makes money on my sites, impossible to compare to the old days when I was making very good money with little effort sort of saying because it was mostly residual income: I would work hard for X period of time and I would get income for longer than that due to that work. I forgot about Adsense a while ago and I have other plans and strategies, working hard? yes but not as hard as in the past, I'm trying to work smarter.

I really dislike how Adsense is the worst part of my websites in terms of looks, content and... speed. Income? yes but hell the first factors are a pain.

The reason I still keep Adsense has just a small bit to do with the income, it's mostly because I'm not thinking about it and I'm focused on something else. I started thinking about removing Adsense a while ago (and still I don't stop thinking about it). In my case, more than growing apart from Adsense I've been increasingly growing apart the web work, still keep the sites but I'm mostly about doing something else, with my hands, things that I can touch. It feels way better, specially having control over the process like planning, knowing and getting something directly out of it, it feels rehabilitating! don't take the word control too seriously, let's say things make more sense.

Adsense became an income and UX nightmare yes but to me that's not the worst, it's now a very negative business model. People will disagree with me but it is, turn... literally adsense into a real life business like selling cakes and there you have it: working hard and having terrible sales only-God-knows-why, then good sales, then bad, then trying what worked doesn't work anymore and repeat, it's just some person working hard trying to please clients with multiple personalities, that's not good.

[Lagonda]

@explorador I can relate.
A little bit tired of this screen life...

[JS_Harris]

Once free from Adsense I would take the opportunity to free yourself from gmail as well.

Once upon a time you could use the email of your choice but at some point over the years Google forced adsense users to have a gmail account. I do not believe that you should have ANYTHING else from a company or service that you have financial dealings with, when one gets hacked they all do.

[Selen]

I'm a small Adsense player, but these are the negatives I've noticed (besides constantly-falling earnings):

- Adds around 20% to page load,

- It strongly appears organic Google search may be impacted by "over-the-fold" ads (not only Adsense),

- From the Adsense balance page (I agree with that): "We understand that improving the user experience of your site, while still maintaining and growing your revenue, is a tough balance to strike." -- it clearly states that user experience is negatively affected by ads of any kind; if on the next big update Google adds even more negative points against sites with poor user experience, the potential earnings may not be really worthwhile,

- To make some reasonable money, ads should be above-the-fold, but that increases bounce rate (negative organic SEO),

- Certain things like mild nudity or keywords violate Adsense rules,

- Ad blockers. If 30% of ads are not seen because a visitor uses an ad blocker.. it's like working for 70% of your site's potential for 100% of the hours you have to put in it.

[broccoli]

I experienced a sudden, weirdly disproportionate revenue drop after the March 2018 update last year. Then it happened again after I switched to SSL last summer. Despite regaining my traffic before getting slapped down again by the March 2019 update (30% loss), my income didn’t recover at all. I’ve been making peanuts and trying to live off it for the last year, whilst trying to recover my site. I have autoimmune problems and I can’t figure out an escape plan that wouldn’t damage my health. I’m currently averaging £12 a day for a site with 10K page views. 18 months ago I was making £45 a day and living comfortably and independently.

I’m sure there’s something suspicious going on that relates to faulty trust algorithms. I’ve had adsense on my site since 2003. I never used to get download ads. I feel completely let down by Google. They’ve damaged MY trust algorithms!

I’ve been rewriting my site to work with a CDN so I can try Ezoic. I might also try AdThrive and Mediavine. I’m almost done and it can’t come soon enough, I can’t live like this for much longer. Does anyone have any suggestions for other premium ad providers I could put on my list to try?

[trebuchet]

Sorry to hear all that, broccoli, but your experiences are not at all uncommon. Many of us have battled with tumbling revenues and declining ad quality. There's also falling EPC and CTR, the latter due to a combination of poor ad quality and Google's aggressive click-shearing.

For me, the biggest problem with Adsense these days is ad quality. Aside from a few remaining niches, the big players have all moved on. They're other targetting particular sites or dealing with other networks, and we're left with junk. There's nothing more disappointing than loading a top-of-SERP page containing high-quality content written by experts in the field and seeing it monetised with utter rubbish.

[tangor]

Adsense is bloate these days ... bloated with advertiser dollars spent on reports that probably aren't truthful. Bean counters maximizing returns. Odd ideology shoe-horned in. Catering to brands/names. G siphoning off content for their add pages (used to be called serps, but I call a spade a spade).

Every update, since 2012, has been a reduction in webmaster income. That trend will continue. Meanwhile g's financials grow leaps and bounds. No tin foil, just a recognition that a shareholder based corp will do all it can to maximize the bottom line.

Glad I got out ... about 2012. :)

[jojy]

Why don't you realize that Google's aim is to user never leave their search engine. Whatever you type Google has almost every answer ready for you on search page: [screencast.com...] with our contents and they are making money from our contents.

[Lagonda]

There's something that not every AdSense publisher realizes that justifies almost every complaint that we read along these threads.

Google is the middleman.
Advertisers and users are who you must please.

AdSense, to me, has two main issues currently, related to my previous statement:

- the banner ad model isn't working as it used to, meaning, it doesn't bring enough value to advertisers and, people just don't click and pay attention to banners anymore - ad blindness and ad repulsion is at its peak, not really an AdSense exclusive but, it's also a victim

- Google's in its quest to be the number one advertising network in the planet, and to offer to advertisers the biggest possible number of impressions, accepted everyone, bringing every scammer, every MFA, every "let's fool the advertiser" to the party, deceiving both the user and the advertiser, lowering the trust of advertisers and users and at the same time cheapening the inventory (brand safety is a thing that pushes away the biggest spenders, that by themselves pull the auction price up so, no big spenders = no competitive auction = low RPM)

So, when you complain about AdSense, please don't forget this.
Do everything to please the advertiser, while not deceiving the user.
If you do this, in the long run, maybe, just maybe, things will get better.
Sure, this won't solve everything, as it isn't a panacea but, please, aim for the long term.

I am always aiming for the long term, my ad balance is at 60%, I don't flood the user with ads or annoyances (no pop-ups, no newsletter subscribing nags, no notification requests, nothing like that) even if that doesn't get me the money that I could be earning.
I rather earn 60 today and 60 tomorrow, than 100 today and 40 tomorrow.
And, by doing this, I've been relatively successful.

Yet, my main focus right now is diversification.
Traffic diversification and revenue diversification. Don't depend on Google.

Best of luck to you all. :)

[AnAppleADay]

I serve a small niche with a large community. The ads used to be paid well to very well. Booking the ads for my area was easy and fast even for small companies. Today the value of the niche doesn't matter any more, to book an ad, I have to be an Adwords expert.

Now that I'm selling ad space by ad space directly, I can easily get four times the ad price. The companies want to book with me, they are willing to pay a high price for it, but Google doesn't want them anymore. The small companies also don't want to hire an Adwords agent, they just want to see their banner on my site.

Next the link block flies out and then only one advertising space remains for nostalgic reasons at Adsense.

Now I start the merchandising and discuss with MY advertisers what is profitable for both sides in the future, not what Google means, how they have to make their website Google-conform. I'm now trying to become for my niche that Google used to be.

I call my advertisers and they pay for it. I help them with problems and mediate between customer and company. Just like before and it's really fun!

Thanks Google, sleep much better now almost without Adsense and I'm almost back where I was in 2010 - 2012 when we were both respected partners.

I still have your Christmas presents that you sent me back then. I like to remember the partner events and the constructive phone calls with Adsense support. Back when you didn't treat me as a fraud, back when my work was a win-win situation for both sides.

[Runfun]

@broccoli, I'll send you a private message with an ad partner.

@Lagonda, ad blindness, lol, well maybe that's an excuse from Googles side but last year there was a CTR of 0.15 tot 0.20 but look at this since the beginning of 2019: [drive.google.com...]

Are all users suddenly blind? The problem here is mostly the bad ads. I've several ads with rubbish like Elon Musk sold his company and is investing in blabla... I can't remove or report the ads. Most fraud ads I can report but several are impossible to block or remove.

[broccoli]

Where did all the good ads go, that’s what I want to know. I still had good ads on my site until I switched to SSL. I had to move my pages off subdomains when I made the switch. Were the ads tied to the subdomains? Why did my ad coverage drop so much after the switch? I feel like a fool for believing all the propaganda around SSL. I shouldn’t have touched my site at all.

When my traffic was at its lowest after the switch, I was earning £12 a day in September 2018 with only 4K page views, and I’m still only earning £12 a day in April 2019 with 10K page views. What’s going on with my RPM? It’s like Google decided my website is only worth £12 a day no matter what amount of traffic I get or how hard I work.

I was making more off TWO pages on my personal website in 2010 than I am off a 70 page site today.

[Musicarl]

AdSense was a revelation, but Google itself seems to have sabotaged it. There was a time when AdSense reps would push for more units while the search side would penalize sites for it.

[broccoli]

Just to expand a little more on the mysteious declining RPM. I’ve been watching my traffic and my adsense figures closely.

After each quality update I’ve received an increase in traffic, and on the day after the traffic increase I’ve had one good day of earnings that accurately reflects my increased traffic. Then the day after, my RPM decreases and I’m earning virtually the same as before the update, maybe a few pence more. What’s going on? I’ve seen it happen every time.

I managed to slowly creep my way up to earning about £17 in the six weeks before the March 2019 core update, less than half of the £45 a day I was earning at the same traffic level the year before, and for several years prior. With each traffic increase my RPM reduced.

They were quick to reduce my earnings when my traffic fell - back to £12, to reflect my newly lowered RPM.

These figures don’t make sense to me in terms of a bear market for advertising. The traffic level at the top of my niche is huge and there are spammy websites getting rewarded with premium ads, despite blatant adsense violations like sticky ads and ads almost touching submit buttons. Why would my relatively small increase in traffic share be treated with a drop in RPM every time? This feels much more like some sort of faulty machine learning algorithm imposed on my account.

[Malanje]

If I can give my five cents with my limited English, I would say that SSL migration is not related to low RPM. A lot has changed over the last twelve months, successive important updates from Google, new layout of SERPS, YouTube babysitter, response boxes with copied content, keyword suggestions, mobile content and so on.

The number of ad slots in SERPS increased significantly for each unique search. Imagine the new ad spots that came with that change. Of course the result would be a huge price drop (smartpricing) across partner sites. Ads in search have always been more expensive than ads on websites. If the quantity has increased exponentially then the bid prices must have been reduced. That is why we are seeing low values.