April 2019 AdSense Earnings & Observations

"...I believe I found something that could decrease my earnings. "

[Runfun]

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System: The following 2 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/4937392.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 10:29 am on Apr 1, 2019 (utc -5)

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I'm glad the website isn't dead but I believe I found something that could decrease my earnings. I've a community so visitors generate a lot of pageviews. Since a couple of hours I see blanks where I don't have a passback or I see a lot of ads from my passback. So if a visitor generates a lot of pageviews Adsense stops to show ads from the network... not even with Admanager and other networks. I've to find out how to solve this.

[TheEnigma]

Abysmal April, 40% down compared to last April, on roughly similar traffic.

Yet Google will continue to post massive profits each quarter...you know where all our money is going!

[Mentat]

Well, my site is full of “Mature godess” dating ads!
Maybe is IBA, I’m not so young anymore...

[gatormark]

April has been strange. My traffic and rankings are one again steadily increasing but my Adsense revenue has dropped considerably over the past couple days. April is historically my best month. What’s going on?

[robzilla]

you know where all our money is going!

To other publishers, most likely. Your loss is another's gain.

[Mentat]

To other publishers, most likely. Your loss is another's gain.

This is only available when the number of publishers is ~ constant.
The problem is there are more and more publishers, more and more content created.
As traditional media died, they invested heavy into online => more content ad page views.

So we have an exploding supply and a striking advertiser base.

The truth is that Google is making more and more money, but we are getting poorer each day, but is not because google is getting reacher, because our product is getting cheaper each day.

The solution seems to be services, but the costs of doing business online is increasing.

[gatormark]

This Saturday compared to one week ago, Saturday.

5,000 more page views
15 more clicks
$40 LESS dollars. ?

[robzilla]

So we have an exploding supply and a striking advertiser base.

Not sure about the "striking advertiser base", but the number of publishers is undoubtedly growing, and it's likely that advertiser demand can't quite keep up. Either way, ads are going to be served first and foremost by the publishers that offer the better bang for the buck, and the others are left with, well, whatever's left. The more publishers enter the marketplace, the more likely it is that someone's going to be eating at your piece of the pie. And if you find yourself at the lower end of the scale, with revenue continually decreasing, it's probably not going to get better by itself, but that doesn't mean the program is broken.

[tangor]

Amazon as a destination is beginning to eat g's lunch. Certainly is siphoning off ad dollars that once went to g. Expect more upsets in the near future as this seems to be a trend gaining steam.

[NickMNS]

The truth is that Google is making more and more money, but we are getting poorer each day, but is not because google is getting reacher, because our product is getting cheaper each day.

@mentat I agree with the general principal of what you are saying, and thus disagree with Robzilla's statement. But I see the reason slightly differently.

Google doesn't care where their ads appear. They don't even need to fully fill the available inventory. So it is in their interest to allow as many websites as possible to show their ads. In fact, it advantages to them because, they need to match advertisers with content. Having a bigger pool of content to select from increases the probability of finding an optimal match. Google doesn't take a loss if an ad spaces goes unfilled, the publisher does. The barriers to entry are low and competition is high. Add to this the fact that Google happily promotes the myth that anyone can make money. (Which was the case by design in the early days). High profit + no barriers to entry ==> becomes ==> High competition + Low profits.

The bottom line is that ads space is a commodity. The only solution is differentiation (which is difficult and in many cases impossible), advertisers need to seek you out. The more repeat, advertisers you have the more successful you will be, and pushed to the extreme AdSense then becomes redundant.

[Ironside]

Can somebody tell me whereabouts in my AdSense account I go to find out how much my mobile ads have earned me?

[Dmajer]

I dont know.... Click price is still awful.

[trebuchet]

Can somebody tell me whereabouts in my AdSense account I go to find out how much my mobile ads have earned me?

Reports > Traffic > Platforms

[NickMNS]

Yesterday was my worst day in a long time, like in the last two years. Bad! Today is not looking much better. It seems to be CTR related.

I have noticed in the ad-review that there are a many ads with phone numbers. Do we get paid when users call instead of click? I thought phone numbers in ads was against AdWords policies.

[Sissi]

After a horrible last week, things are getting better since Sunday (+ 90% against the Sunday before qich easy to achieve in view of the miserable revenues at that time) and I haven‘t changed anything.
High RPM and CTR are back, noting that source of traffic is mainly European in a specific niche.
Looks that Adsense has made some changes and therefore we have seen the problems during the last 4 weeks.
Just be aware of the fact that we see here only complaints, however people who are enjoying their adsense revenues are not visible.
Last but not least: I would not follow all suggested advises here , as every website is specific as to the content, the niche, the publishers, the country etc.
Other alternatives to Adsense will not come as long as it s the case:
Don t give up!

[gatormark]

Yesterday I bounced back from a very weird weekend. I’m not sure what happened this weekend since my traffic was good but revenue was exceptionally low. Still, things now seem to be back to the NEW normal (Monday).

[tangor]

<humor>
Is g down to Monday, Tuesday, Wemakesometoday, activity?

Great to know!
</humor>

Daily stuff is just that ... daily. It is not a metric until 30+days. And even then is not a trend until 180 days later.

Otherwise you are watching your automoble speedometer to keep inside "legal limits" and g has already set those ... and you don't know it. (Black Box)

[Sissi]

When you show the moon to some people
The look at your finger

[tangor]

^^^ better than dropped drawers!

Some mysteries are best concealed in AI algos. :)

[dollarsound]

Might be off topic but I've created a new thread so any of you using link units and have their revenue halved can check if your account has the same issue than mine:

[webmasterworld.com ]

[AlexB77]

I have noticed unusually big click-back activity since the beginning of April. For example this morning I have had £47 and now I have only £32. Anyone else?

[trebuchet]

tangor is right about daily stats, they're not worth worrying about. There's just too many variables, known and unknown - seasonal factors, a holiday here or there, a sale or campaign that brings advertisers to your site or diverts them away, ups and downs in the corporate budgetary cycle, intervention or tinkering by ad networks, fluctuations in audience, etc. etc.

Impossible to draw many conclusions from daily stats except "good day", "bad day" or "so-so day". Monthly is the go-to metric for mine.

[NickMNS]

@tangor and @trebuchet
I can't speak for the others but when I post a statement like the one just above saying that a day is particularly bad (or good) that is not a "daily stat". It describes a local minimum over a time frame of month and in this case years and speaks to a statistically significant event.

As to seasonality and other exogenous factors, these can impact a monthly time period just as much if not more so than a daily time period. In fact seasonality, strictly speaking is not likely to impact daily results, as the time period is too short. At the daily level one has day of the week effects in place of seasonality. But like seasonality day-of-the-week effects can easily be controlled for. Simply compare the day's results to the same day in the previous week as opposed to "yesterday", Saturday to Saturday, Sunday to Sunday, etc.

I will take this opportunity to raise some important caveats. Be cautious drawing conclusion on stats in AdSense before the time period is complete. What I mean is don't compare today's RPM when it is only 10am to last Tuesday's RPM as today's. Intra-day RPM is still changing and can change significantly. The same goes on monthly basis, don't compare April 2019 RPM on April 9th, to April 2018, wait until the month in complete.

This brings up a more subjective issue, be sure that there is sufficient data within your time period to be able to reliably use that information. If you only get 100 page views a day then using a daily measure can be unreliable. How much is enough? That is hard to say exactly, but more is better. On the same note, this can also be an issue if you are drilling down into specifics, like say looking at the RPM of a single 3rd party ad-network, if the metric reported is based on 30 page-views, it probably can't be trusted.

[Nightmute]

Non link units are down ~10% week over week. That's a macro trend.

[Mentat]

Monday was promising, but as usual, the miracle lasted just one day!
Tuesday is going down badly.

I don't know if it's much, but I have 50k page views/day.

[NickMNS]

Further to my post on April 8th. What is up with ads like this:
[imgur.com...]

"Call ###-###-#### or visit www.example.com"
but certainly don't click on the ad.

WTF Adsense?

[Sissi]

Surviving the SEO update and the Adsense problems is a role for heros nowadays.

Additionally they are clear signs of global recession and guess what costs do you cut first?

[Mentat]

This recession seems to be at-least two years in the making.
As middle class all over the world is under pressure and the internet is killing a lot of classic offline business, the pool of new/small advertisers is getting smaller and smaller, but the publishing is exploding, as Adsense competition.

My traffic was affected by last month update by -20%, but the biggest problem is still the eCPM payment.
Today the payment is as low as weekend.

[nomis5]

CPC and CTR very low here on my UK site. March was fine but April is looking decidedly dodgy. Page views increasing steadily.

[MayankParmar]

Terrible April in terms of everything :(

[Sissi]

Looks better slowly at January level (Europe)
After 5 weeks of misery.
Even if it has no links to Adsense, fine tuning the indexation at G search console has apparently helped (?) not only in terms of traffic but quality traffic.