September 2019 AdSense Earnings & Observations

Discussion of AdSense Earnings for Month of September 2019

[Samsam1978]

There is some technical issue I believe because my earnings have only gone up a small % since 9/10pm last night and the traffic has been steady. Analytics also not updated since that time. It is such a massive drop I had to come on here to see if anyone else has experienced the same. Near the end of month I expect it to be high earnings as ad houses push their budgets but it is the weekend I guess. I believe it might be a technical glitch and hope adsense sorts it out soon.

[edited by: not2easy at 5:48 pm (utc) on Sep 2, 2019]
[edit reason] New thread cleanup [/edit]

[azlinda]

@Runfun, the same thing is happening to me also. It's really bad on desktop also. Huge blank space at the top of the page. Now I wish they would go back to the regular 728x90. This is pathetic.

[CommandDork]

All of my mobile responsive banners are showing as 300x250, which is awful for the header ad blocks taking up screen space in the initial load of a page.

Doesn't matter if I set a max-height, height or 'horizontal' data-as-format value, they still do what they want to do. This is across all of my properties right now : /

In landscape mode (phone), it all works fine however.

[azlinda]

@Runfun, Top banners are rarely showing on desktop also, leaving a huge blank space.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

All of my mobile responsive banners are showing as 300x250, which is awful for the header ad blocks taking up screen space in the initial load of a page.

Did you try to set the "data-ad-format" to "horizontal"? It works for me (without I also have 300x250 anywhere).

However, I have a problem, when I set the adsense sticky banner at the bottom, instead of the top, it shows 10 times less often, than when it's on top. Is that normal?

[JorgeV]

addition : it sucks that Adsense disabled the backup ads feature. It was great to avoid empty slot, I was using it to self promote my content , it was better than empty space. At least, if Adsense was allowing to collapse empty ads above the fold, this would be good.

[skaterpunk]

However, I have a problem, when I set the adsense sticky banner at the bottom, instead of the top, it shows 10 times less often, than when it's on top. Is that normal?

This should be a basic question, just like many questions regarding the use of Adsense, but the lack of transparency by Adsense just leaves us publishers "assuming".

Yes, I have noticed forcing Auto Ads > Anchor Ads to the bottom, seem to show less often, whereas the default top placement would show on every page load for me. But, I don't have long term data to provide for these ad placements, e.g. several months or more.

[edited by: skaterpunk at 3:42 pm (utc) on Sep 4, 2019]

[azlinda]

I have no banner ads showing at all now...just huge blank spaces. The only thing left to do is remove the banner ads to get rid of the ugly white space.

[skaterpunk]

@azlinda, I have given up on Adsense for the time being and removed all the code this past week. Revenue has been in a downward spiral for the last year, with a few spikes to keep me invested, but I'm done now.

Time to focus 100% on content again and see if I can interest direct advertising.

[tanthinkers]

I am from India , Today My Adsense earning is the Lowest in last 2 Months . Page RPM is very Low for last 7 Days . Why is this happening ?

[Sissi]

Confirmation that adsense has a problem

Today was a day comparable to 2018 and 3 times higher than yesterday and the day before.Sunday was by the way higher than Monday.
And since 2 hours reporting is blocked.

[Wader]

yap i got 7x lower revenue from december till now compare to last 3-4 years

[adsenseuser]

I'm still 50% down daily compared to the last 3 months. I can't compare to last year as made lots of changes to ad sizes and recommendations since Sept 2018.

Was consistently doing around the same daily June, July and August but now getting half that amount since 25th August.

[Runfun]

Maybe just a coincidence but today at almost 3 PM I've earned exactly the same as yesterday. CPC gained a lot but I'll wait for the next days instead of cheering to early.

[Sissi]

The last two days are doing far better but less than last year

[gatormark]

Still not seeing that 4th quarter money or an increase in CPC...

[azlinda]

Google, if you're not going to show ads, then close up the darned huge white space. I can't imagine that this promotes a good user experience. I'm so sick of it!

[RedBar]

then close up the darned huge white space.

When I was showing ads and there were none, my ad space would close down and it was impossible to see that was actually ad space just the same as if someone were visiting the site with javascript switched off.

Why doesn't your ad space(s) close down, is it/are they in fixed div positions or something?

Just wondering.

[Runfun]

Maybe my earnings are rising today because of the first price auction but I believe it's only introduced at Ad Manager.

[azlinda]

@RedBar Yes, I have fixed div positions for all the ads. But the top banner ad is set at 100px in height. The oversized banner ads override that setting. I'm really stymied.

[fearlessrick]

Whenever I begin to get positive results from Adsense, Google makes sure to punish me with days of low earnings. I've been using Adsense since '03, and they were not so heavy-handed as they are now. It's beginning to become depressing, which, I suppose is the effect Google desires from small, independent publishers.

In the eyes of Google executives - and this is pure conjecture on my part - independent publishers are not supposed to earn a reasonable income. They are only there for Google to farm, to scrape up their content, and make Google bigger. Sometimes I hate myself for being a pawn in their big game, but what is one to do?

Eventually, Google will kill off all independent publishers in their quest to have the world dominated by themselves and fellow mega-corporations. Not that I dislike big companies, I just dislike their policies of disregard for humanity and decency.

Sorry, but after a surprisingly good Labor Day weekend, earning-wise (usually the worst 2-3 days of the year for me), the past two days have been equally underperforming. Just gets under my skin.

[meryenn]

i have today 0,33 usd RPM. unbelievable

[Runfun]

Here it seems like fearlessrick described, yesterday was good, maybe one of the best days in the last 2 months. Today it's worse like the last weeks. Adsense started August with about a CPM of 40 cents and it ended with about 25 cents. Frustrating but with no better options they are the best backup for not direct sales.

[adsenseuser]

Got the rest of today to go, but I am reporting 40% down this month so far vs. the same day last month. Again, drop of daily RPM since 25th August.

[nmbrsk]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel perhaps it's best not to compare stats from day-to-day or today vs the same day last week/month/year. There are hundreds of factors that determine the CPC, RPM etc. including advertisers' budgets, seasonal events, etc. which are bound to be ever-changing.

I've always looked at my stats for a more extensive period. I tend to break down the year in four segments, so I'd look at how the current three month period is doing vs the period before and last year, as well as a rolling three month period.

Due to my niche (specific sport news), some days I'll earn around £0.50 (when it's off-season, without any matches or if there's no 'news'), others I'll earn anywhere between £200 to £1300 (match-days). My traffic can fluctuate from 400 unique page-views some days to 180,000 unique page-views on others. So maybe that's what's best for me, but I always think there's no point in comparing things day to day, or even week on week.

For those that do compare day-to-day, I assume you have the same consistent traffic everyday and are therefore able to see the fluctuations more reliably?

I'd also love to hear thoughts from people who are in a similar news/sports niche to me and how they track their performance, when it can be so dependent on what the climate is in the sporting world.

[gatormark]

@nmbrsk

Yes, seasonality is a factor in almost all niches, that's why it is best to compare to the month of your previous year...and not month to subsequent month or day to subsequent day.

[nmbrsk]

Absolutely. However, I see a lot of posts from people who say RPM/CPC is down XYZ% from last week/yesterday. Surely these are all just usual fluctuations? I also think comparing today vs the same day last year can be troublesome as, again, it's not just seasonal factors but also budgets and the general economic climate - which, as we know, is hugely volatile as of late.

[NickMNS]

@nmbrsk and gatormark.
No method is perfect and what works for one site likely doesn't for another. I tend to compare current day to same day last week. But my traffic tends to be consistent from week to week. I typically find that over the span of a year one can make many changes to ones site and these can impact traffic, and worse still Google makes algo updates which again changes traffic patterns. I find year over year to be too wide a time span to be relevant.

But the bottom line is that you need to know your website, your traffic and you need to fully understands the metrics that you are following to be able to account for any biases that exist.

Personally, I view traffic and AdSense earnings completely separately. I see many people simply discussing net earnings, there is no value in that. One can have poor traffic day, and good earnings day that earns less less than good traffic day and poor earnings. For example, if your coverage drops and your traffic increases you may not see a big difference in earnings, a not react. Why the drop in coverage? why the boost in traffic? Are the tow related? Is there invalid click activity? If you don't see this, you may end up a month end with a big claw-back, wondering why? Traffic issues and Adsense earnings issues require different actions to correct, both need to be watched independently .

[Sissi]

It s not about traffic only
Adsense is playing with parameters we don t understand yet.

One of my websites is back to 2018 revenues level. Have tried to find out what differenciate the page from the others:

The content is high qualitative.
The keywords are really niche.
And.... I haven t change anything since 4 years !

[adsenseuser]

I can't compare to last August or September as my site was recovering from another issue I'm not going into today.

I also mad tweaks to ad sizes, recommendations etc in about March or April.

But... my site is very consistent day-on-day. Monday does approx x, Friday does approx y etc.

I keep all this data in Excel - I compare days, months, weeks, quarters. Since 25th August it has significantly dropped.

About 50% down on what I would call "a typical day" based on last 4-5 months.

[ember]

One of my websites is back to 2018 revenues level.

What does that mean? Is traffic down? Maybe someone who linked to your site no longer is or maybe a keyword lost ranking. Is EPC down? Maybe a large advertiser stopped targeting your site or spent most of his budget for the quarter. Is CTR down? Maybe a new advertiser is not attracting as many clicks or another is not bidding as high as before and not showing as often. There is almost always a reason why things drop. Sometimes it's google making changes, usually without telling us. Often it is just the ebb and flow of the online advertising business.