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...

[CommandDork]

Memorial Day weekend in USA continues today, so expect everyone to be busy with things other than the internet.

[Dimitri]

nearly NO ADS are being served to the users

What does your "coverage" stat say?

[dollarsound]

For those not showing ads, are you using ads.txt. Have you tried to remove it?

[Malanje]

For those who complain that ads are not running, one possible explanation may be that advertisers are being taken to Google properties. At this point, it is the only way to continue to increase profits compared to last year. We should keep in mind that general websites and small businesses on the Internet are becoming less relevant to Google as partners.

[windmm]

Anyone still has ads showing, however Clicks decreased by a lot?

[djfang]

@Dimitri 2,143 page views to 80 impressions, that's almost no ads served.
@dollarsound I didn't have ads.txt, placed one yesterday, took it away today as it made no difference.

Google have finally replied to a friend of mine and we're probably narrowing down the story:
"As we have been unable to verify the quality of your traffic, your ad serving is currently being limited. Your sites or apps may experience less demand from Google while we evaluate your traffic quality."

Long story short, they've put apparently <5K pageviews/daily websites on some 'traffic analysis queue' which, per another Google expert post I found somewhere around the AdSense forums, occurs once website is approved and may reoccur at any given moment. Thus, considering the scale of this queue and publishers being put on it on the very same day - May 24, probably means this is going nowhere. Or, as @Malanje said, 'we should keep in mind that general websites and small businesses on the Internet are becoming less relevant to Google as partners.'

Hope any of you guys facing this issue are beyond the payment threshold to get one last payment because getting some more than few cents is improbable to occur soon.

[Dimitri]

I am not sure that the coverage metrics is the same as the ratio page view / ad impression.

[Sissi]

I m not sure this applies to every one
We habe websites with < 500 daily views and they are well served with high RPMs ads

[Sissi]

But I believe that the Cost per Action or needed clicks to have a lead is now a kind of rating for each website ( just speculating).

An advertiser will invest in pages where the users are ‚high quality‘ client and not only clickers for fun.

In other words Adsense could have found a way to limit the number of publishers in concentrating on the good leaders.

[Dimitri]

they've put apparently <5K pageviews/daily websites on some 'traffic analysis queue'

From where do you have this value (5K), or is that because you friend's site is bellow 5K visitors? I might be wrong, but I doubt that Adsense minds the number of page views. Adsense is not Google Search, different meaning of "quality traffic" :)
I would think that Adsense look at CTR. Too low CTR = low quality traffic, too high CTR = Suspect = low quality, also, they certainly look at the time spent on the advertisers' sites and if actions are performed after a click.

As I said, it's Adsense's perception of quality traffic, a traffic which produces results for the advertisers. In real life of course, this is not like that. You can have an extremely quality of traffic, and if your site is of good quality too, people might not have to click on ads (if they found on your side what they wanted).

[djfang]

Quite honestly, for a website with 2-3% CTR, this is nowhere the low quality traffic thing mentioned. Also, they haven't defined what's 'low' and what's 'high' CTR. About the 5K pageviews website, this is generally the thing I noticed reported by several people around. No website with 5K+ pageviews has experienced this issue (as far as I've noticed).

Whatever the case is, I think we can all agree on one thing: they need to notify us that we're no longer compliant for their program and that this is not going to be anything temporary so that we can just switch to something else (honestly, no alternatives to AdSense work as perfectly, worked with quite a few noted on many websites, but I haven't got my money as easy and I haven't made that big revenue). To be honest, this is going to be better for both publishers and Google as 1) publishers won't have blank space on their websites and 2) Google won't have the responsibility to care about invalid traffic about them = easier for them to maintain high quality traffic, which is their 'aim', as they have mentioned.

[Sissi]

@djfang fully agree

Adsense network needs a new birth.

[Malanje]

There are sites with all kinds of content, which attract different advertising. In general terms, I think that what I wrote before is still valid.

From my experience there is no pageview limit per day but it is a factor that influences the advertiser's interest.

[Dimitri]

this is nowhere the low quality traffic thing mentioned

Low quality from Adsense point of view, means traffic which generates ROI for the advertisers.

[Sissi]

Today ads are showing but income is zero
Delays in reporting probably

[djfang]

I can also confirm that things have started to take off with my page RPM being 0.01 after 3 days of 0.00 RPM. No revenue, but things are coming back to normal apparently. Personally, I still don't see ads on my website but I've got some impressions and this is a good sign.

[IndyMattR]

Last two days for me have been great, same traffic but 20% up on earnings. Certainly best two days of the year so far and almost matching those of a year ago.

[gatormark]

The quality of AdSense ads is much better on my site, however, I am still not seeing a revenue return since the May 2 drop. I know it's a holiday weekend in the USA, so I'll see what happens for the rest of the week.

[gregmaks]

Well.. Was hoping this Frankenstein fiasco will be over by May. But since UK Prime Minister May planning to quit in June over Brexit fiasco, I think Adsense woe/s will continue through June.. Jokes apart, its terrible...

[Runfun]

It sounds reasonable that Adsense would ban sites with low traffic. They did the same with YouTube channels/videos. I would mind such developments but I still can't believe that Google has problems for almost a month now. Buying put options wouldn't be a bad idea at all.

[Sissi]

Tuesday reports in EU looks bad today.
Probably budget at the end of the month.
Do not wonder if Adsense closes the reports and reopen in September

[djfang]

@RunFun Yeah, but if you post videos regularly you eventually will be able to display some ads even if the niche is a causa perduta. Whereas with websites it's not quite like the same, you may be working yourself off but still be considered with 'low quality traffic'. Also, as some people said, it's not the pageviews that matter, it's the traffic that comes. And this is kind of out of control in some cases, you can't just for example ban all Indians from visiting your website because traffic from India may be considered low quality. They should at least let us know.

Thank god, my impressions were enough today to get one click, worth 24 cents. Hope it's getting better soon.

[Runfun]

@Sissi, somehow sad but also realistic, all downs with Adsense could be because of end of the quarter, end of the month, Valentines day or end of the world. That status dashboard is worrying... all month problems and no message from Google. Good news is that a new advertiser starts advertising tomorrow directly for about 15 times the CPM that Adsense earns me.

[Sissi]

@Rundun
Hopes die last.
Unfortunately Adsense is the sole alternative I have for languages I have Affiliation in my area is a fiasco

[ww2015]

After 6 years of using Adsense/AdX - with a high 6 figure revenue during this time - I have pulled all Google advertising/tracking from all of the sites I control.

The decline has been significant in recent years - and the past nine months have been a total disaster. Lets look at some of the key factors that made this large publisher to tell Google to GTFO.

1. Absolute decline in RPM
2. Zero support and abusive practices [smart pricing/double click/realtime testing]
3. Terrible advertising stock - green buttons, scamware, toxic dating/nutri, and the usual sub cent retargetting filling in the rest
4. Incredibly bad effect on page load times
5. Empty units
6. Nasty 'do plenty of evil' google mantra - spying on users, deciding whats appropriate to be shown/discussed, generally a creepy big brother 'partner'
7. No accountability
8. No development/growth - the newest auto ads is a fiasco that has seen users get banned due to its placements.

You know G is dead when contextual and video units provider higher RPMs. There is no point putting up with their garbage, when slashing the amount of ads and focusing on direct sales and affiliate products earns double what the almighty G can provide.

Big tech needs to be accountable.

[dollarsound]

Those whose sites still dont show Adsense Ads, have you tested with Adx tags?
Just to confirm it's a quality issue or a bug in Adsense ?

[djfang]

They confirmed it's thanks to some traffic quality inspection.

[windmm]

Did you get any email from them djfang?

[djfang]

Yes, they finally responded @windmm. It's some sort of an email template they send to everyone with this issue.

[gatormark]

Wow, Exponential is catching up with Adsense on my site, mainly because Adsense has so many blank ad slots...and Exponential only focuses on USA and other English markets.

My Adsense English market has nosedived.