May 2019 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[Mentat]

April 2019 was a kick in the teeth for most /some of us.

Easter (Catholic and Orthodox) and very low payment made April a very bad surprise.

May is here and it's starting with a non-working day (1st of May - International Workers' Day) in many countries.

Hope the best, expect the worst...

[bugthinker]

I still encounter a nosedive in my earnings for the last few days with the same traffic. I notice though that for most of the time, ads are not served on mobile. Like I will see only 1 block as opposed to my expected 3 blocks.

[Sissi]

Looks that this issue is due to a massive attack of clicks from china and now they filtering.
This is just a speculation based on the mews as to tve self clicking chinese app they deterred some weeks ago.
Same for SEO, this instabilty coupled with absence of ads is killing the publisher business.
Hopefully they recover as second job Adsense remains the best alternative

[djfang]

@Sissi Great to hear some encouraging words that they may not really be cutting off small publishers.

I can agree about the fact that AdSense remains the best alternative as a second job. Especially if you are a student, those extra money come in really handy that you can earn alongside your project.

[MayankParmar]

May 2019 has improved AdSense, though no significant changes.

I am updating and rewriting old articles for the past two months. Hopefully, the next Google update will bless me with better ranking!

[Sally Stitts]

Bad post, please ignore.
.

[CW_adam]

Hi, new member here. Like many have reported (eg [seroundtable.com...] we saw Adsense serve no ads from Friday 24 May. Previously, we've had uninterrupted and consistent display for nearly 3 years. Nothing in our implementation has changed. We see around 700-1000k impressions per month typically. Between 24 May to now (5 days) we've seen Adsense reduce to zero impressions. Clearly something is up. We've received no communications from Google and no policy violation warnings. Adsense has simply dropped off a cliff without any reason to explain it that we can find.

Has anyone got any theories on what's going on? I note posts above referring to Google auditing/checking quality of traffic in Adsense partner websites. I can't imagine we would have that problem.

[Sissi]

I can imagine that Adesense is working 24/24 these issues as they are losing a couple of millions everyday.
We should be thankful that they have made this month payment on due time

[CW_adam]

Re. Sissi + = So there are definitely issues?
Because our FED team has driven themselves crazy attempting to debug and diagnose the problem with no success. Google Publisher Console [bookmarklet = javascript: googletag.openConsole()] reports that Adsense ads have been fetched and rendered successfully - yet all we see is blank ads. We've run out of ideas.

[Sissi]

Another article about Adsense current problems

[ftnnews.com...]

[Dimitri]

i wouldn't really call it an article, it's just a an article quoting other articles/sites ...

[Sissi]

Within the current disruptions Adsense is facing some observations as to our portfolio trends:

High 2 digit RPM with high CTR are still applying for domains with unique contents related to specifc knowledge and expertise with niche effect.
None of those domains is mentioned is social network ( spamming Facebook is even disruptive for quality traffic).

Drop in RPM and CTR is affecting standard domains with general fields and sectors where they are overrepresented in the web.

In other words: be different and don t follow or even compete against the crowd.

[trebuchet]

We can only speculate what's causing the problem, whether it's a technical glitch or a massive bot war by the Chinese.

What we can agree on is that Google's treatment of publishers has again appalling. When someone's ad impressions drop from six figures in a day to nothing, they are at least owed some kind of explanation, even if it's just a slice-and-dice form letter. Meanwhile, I've just received my third email this month imploring me to active Auto-Ads.

Appalling communication from one of the world's largest companies that suggests utter contempt for its publishers.

[Dimitri]

In other words: be different and don t follow or even compete against the crowd.

+1

[fearlessrick]

Not to sound pedantic, but I've been using adsene on my site since 2003 and I've gone through all the moaning and groaning that I see other members currently engaged.

My two cents worth of advice is to just keep at it and diversify. Adsense isn't going away and there are alternatives. I have always used at least two other CPM ad serving companies in addition to the big G. If G was down, the others would be up, but generally speaking G always produced the most revenue. Having been in this business for 20 years now, I can safely say that continually working on your projects/sites is the best cure for checking stats every 20 minutes.

I ignored my business for probably the better part of 7 years and have recently picked up the baton again and am running with it, fixing lots of pages, updating many more. I'm having my best month in three years and today is already (at 6:00 am ET) the best day I've had in three years.

Just keep working to improve your site and eventually it should pay off. Pay attention to changes and if you don't have ads.txt installed properly in your root folder, you're toast. I've done plenty of things wrong over the years and probably suffered, but I've found that following guidelines and improving the overall quality of your site and expanding it are the best fixes.

Good luck to all and I hope i've offered some sane advice.

[Sissi]

@fearlessrick

Started 2003 as well and can only confirm your approach.

[Dimitri]

Well said @fearlessrick.

[gatormark]

@fearlessrick

That is pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to as well. That’s what I’m doing now, just working on the quality of my websites by making sure some of the older pages are updated and just creating a better overall website. I’m really trying to find out what my market wants in a website and making those changes. The days of resting on your laurels and just making money are over.

[Wader]

News from adesne

We're investing heavily in understanding the best ways to increase user interest in ads and how our ads perform. As a result, our formats are constantly being updated and improved. You may have noticed these new types of ads showing up on your sites.
250 off Google Pixelbook
Pixelbook do more Google Home Mini
We’re committed to continuously investing in the modernization of our advertising products. As a result, there are some important changes we're making to some AdSense features that you have used or configured in the past. Your Ads tab will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect the following changes:
Ad sizes
We've made it easier to create and manage ad units. All ad units will be created Responsive by default to adjust to different screen sizes on mobile and desktop for increased performance and flexibility. If you do need further customization, you’ll still be able to create custom sized ad units.
Ad types
We’re moving towards richer ad formats, phasing out text-only and display-only ad units to further improve user experience, and to fully reflect the pool of ads we have in the market. As a result, the "Text ads only" and "Display ads only" ad units in your account have been renamed to “Display ads” and from early 2019 will be updated to serve all ad types.
Text ad styles
We’re deprecating text ad styles for "Text & display ads" ad units. From now on, you won’t be able to create ad styles for your new ad units. Your new ad units will have Google-optimized text ad styling. As this feature is being deprecated, your existing ad styles will also be optimized by Google in the following months. For customization and improved user experience, you can use native ads on your site.
Simplifying “If no ads available”
We’re continuously working to increase the quality and safety of our ad network and reduce the number of malicious ads that enter the AdSense network. As a result, we're removing the “If no ads available” option and we’ll be defaulting to collapsing the ad space or showing a blank space instead. If your current setting is a color or another URL, it will be updated in the near future your current settings will stop serving in the near future.
Experiments
As a result of the above changes, we're also removing obsolete ad unit setting experiments. Any active ad unit experiments will stop in the following weeks. In conjunction with this, we are removing the experiments report from the Reports tab. For remaining experiment types, aggregate metrics will still be available in the experiment details page.
Synchronous code
Changing your ad code type to synchronous in your AdSense account won’t be available anymore. If you do need synchronous ad code, you can still manually update your ad code using this guide.

[Dimitri]

News from adesne

Link to the original text?

250 off Google Pixelbook
Pixelbook do more Google Home Mini

Hum...

Simplifying “If no ads available”
We’re continuously working to increase the quality and safety of our ad network and reduce the number of malicious ads that enter the AdSense network. As a result, we're removing the “If no ads available” option and we’ll be defaulting to collapsing the ad space or showing a blank space instead. If your current setting is a color or another URL, it will be updated in the near future your current settings will stop serving in the near future.

Sounds like no more backup ads. (still possible to detect the collapse and serve something else, but requires work ...), may be a way to kill alternative networks used as backup ads :)

[Wader]

I got it over email from [e-mail]

[Wader]

oh i find it here [support.google.com...] but its not full like over email

[Dimitri]

I got it over email

Just checked my email box, and indeed I have it too.

[CommandDork]

Got it too : /

[Runfun]

As a result, we're removing the “If no ads available” option and we’ll be defaulting to collapsing the ad space or showing a blank space instead. If your current setting is a color or another URL, it will be updated in the near future your current settings will stop serving in the near future.

... bad development because I like the option of backup ads.

[AlexB77]

@fearlessrick

I also started in 2003 and as you and undoubtedly many others too have made a fair share of mistakes, but somehow managed to survive with all of the things thrown at me. You have given the best possible advice to become and remain successful in this business. If I may only add to your advice a couple of my own words, it would probably be that the reasonable business should most likely concentrate on becoming less and less dependant on the third party monetarization techniques and finding some better solution for themselves with keeping AdSense and the likes as a supplementary income for their business models.

[fearlessrick]

@AlexB77,

Multiple streams of income is a basic tenet of business, small or large. In addition to my three ad revenue sources, I also do online sales, am exploring podcasting (check out anchor.fm, an easy and elegant podcasting solution), and soliciting subscriptions. I also get a monthly SS check, occasionally do odd jobs, and trade yard work for rent (all of it). Life is pretty good. Thanks for your insight.

[RedBar]

Just keep working to improve your site and eventually it should pay off.

'Tis a good job you wrote "should" because, quite simply, for many it has not due to various circumstances totally outside of the publishers' control.

The Google SERPs are manipulated and especially so in favour of US companies regardless of how good or bad their sites may be or even when they have blatantly plagiarised well-established sites with unique content.

[Sissi]

@redbar

I m not sure US companies have got in favour save for local results.
Hard work has always paid off what ever language you use for your websites.

@ all
Looks like Adsense is removing adblocker from Chrome for private users

[Selen]

In 2003, Adsense counted close to 100% clicks, today it's a much much smaller number. In another 5 years, a typical counted CTR could be less than 0.25% (it already is that low in many niches). So you can work 10 times harder, but your end results will remain on the same level, at best.

Let's say, today you have 100K monthly page views at 1% CTR. In 5 years, you may have 200K page views, but once your CTR is adjusted to 0.25%, your real earnings will be 50% less than today.

Those who had Adsense for several years or more - could you check -- have your CTR historically increased or decreased? (my bet is that it has been constantly decreasing)

[skaterpunk]

Hard work has always paid off what ever language you use for your websites.

This is an optimistic…sunshine… and rainbows outlook, but just not true.

As RedBar mentioned, there are too many other variables out of our control.