January 2020 AdSense Earnings & Observations

[nomis5]

Earnings down in 2019 about 7% over the previous year. Visitors slightly up.

Fair enough, personal circumstances resulted in me doing minimal work to my sites in 2019.

2020, fingers crossed, will allow me to work on my sites again and my personal aim is to exceed 2018 earnings in 2020.

[Mentat]

The "funny" thing that the 2nd week of January is worse than the 1st week as payment...

[fearlessrick]

Posted this on the SEO thread, but it really belongs here.
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Let's hope this update fixes the last one, because it's killing me. I have a small niche, good rankings, good traffic, and use Adsense for "some" revenue. The drop-off in RPM and CPC has been dramatic since just after Christmas. I'm currently looking at page RPM at 0.45 and impression RPM of .09. CPC is less than .05.

Pathetic.

I visit this tread sometimes just to see if Google is killing everybody equally and it usually bears out. This month is brutal. Seriously considering selling my own ads. Wouldn't take much, considering what G is paying me. Maybe that's their goal. Kill off small sites, glom up all ad revenue and share with their mega-corp pals.

My new year resolution was to think positive thoughts. G is making that very difficult. ;-)

[Web01]

@fearlessrick not only you have been experiencing this since after Christmas and it has been really bad earnings so far till now the CPC is so worst that am even surprised what's going on likewise the rpm as well earnings dropped so much, well let's keep our hopes high remember it will be back to normal maybe they are also facing some challenges as well or they don't receive adverts from clients that much this January lets be calm it will turn around to good soonest.

[fearlessrick]

Web01, thanks for the support, but after yesterday's performance, I am going to finally cut Google loose. I don't know about anybody else, but I can't morally give away my ad space to these thieves any longer.

Here are my figures from January 11:
2068 page views, 10,016 impressions, 31 clicks, 0.74 RPM, 0.15 impression RPM, 1.57 revenue. Yeah, five cents a click. Sorry, Google, but this isn't 1923, and I don't live in some third world, $500/year per capita income country. This isn't cutting it.

I know that doesn't seem like much to many of you, but I've had this site since 1999, I've made as much as $50 in one day, and for a number of years was averaging over $350 a month, which wasn't bad for part-time. I have other income streams.

Just to make matters worse, they flagged my HOME PAGE for adult content for the second time in five days. I just had it reviewed and ads were restored. Now, blank spaces, again and another review. They've hit me with adult content policy violations for various pages every week for the last 18 months at least. And there's nothing there. I always pass their reviews.

What this amounts to is selective harassment because I make no apologies for being a conservative, for voting and supporting President Trump, and for calling out liberal nonsense and un-American ideas. It's not a sin to have political convictions in the United States, but apparently, to the liberal boneheads out in la-la land, it's a good enough reason to punish people economically.

You know it's not bad enough that Google has made a fortune off the backs of publishers like me, scraping their content to fill up space on their search pages, but when they continue to harass people and damage their livelihoods, they've crossed a line. And the "adult content" on my site? Usually the word "sex" in a description of a magazine or film. Utter nonsense.

I'm moving on. I was lying in bed this morning, thinking what I would need to replace Google, which is on just about every page on my site. Well, at $1.57 a day, $573.05 a year, I don't need to replace them. I just need to sell something on ebay for $10-12 every week. I think I can do that. Or, I could go to work somewhere for $10 an hour and work 10 minutes a day.

Realistically, I can survive without the revenue from G. It's dwindled that much. IDK, but 10,000 impressions should be good for at least $15. That's only $1.50 per thousand. I used to be in the newspaper business, and that was peanuts, years ago. Nobody could survive on even what passes for acceptable on the internet today. I think we used to try for $35/1000 per page, and we worked our tails off for our advertisers.

Thanks for listening. I'm going to have a great day.

[fearlessrick]

I took some time earlier today and relayed my feelings to Google via their feedback button on my Adsense platform. Told them I was leaving if things were going to remain the way they are. Also complained about the constant needling for "adult content" and so forth. All of a sudden, 4 clicks have earned me more than I did all day yesterday. Coincidence?

Could it be somebody is actually turning some knobs, pushing some buttons and penalizing (in the worst way possible, financially) the "partners" they don't like? And then are they that chicken-hearted that they'll cow to the demands of a small-time operator like me?

I swear, Google has throttles on every website. I was just looking at prior years' stats. I do some Super Bowl related writing. Always have. In 2014, I made bundles of money from Google. Some days leading up to the SB (like right now, through the playoffs) were in the $40-60 range. The drop-off for me is likely over 90% to today.

I've already contacted an old direct advertiser and made an offer. I can't and won't allow Google to bully me and make me work for peanuts. Had it.

[ember]

I doubt they’re throttling. I think the lower earnings come down to basic marketplace economics.

As I’ve said before, there are so many more places to advertise these days than when Adwords first started. Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, etc. Advertising budgets are spread beyond Adwords now, lowering competition on the platform and thereby lowering epcs that we are paid.

On top of that, you now need a PhD to run an Adwords campaign. It’s gotten sooo complicated. In my own case, I’ve moved a lot of my adverting to FB because it’s easier to navigate and the ROI is much better. I’m sure I’m not the only advertiser who knows that.

[Mentat]

The problem is there is an infinity of us (publishers) and fewer and fewer advertisers that use the Adsense for Content.

This is a problem even for google in the VERY long run, but for the moment, the pond is full of fishes and a lot of 2nd and 3rd world countries are duping large amounts of content each day.
Quality-wise, the new generation is looking for video, as it seems incapable to read.

I use DFP from the beginning and now, as a paradox, the payment on DFP is even smaller than Adsense!
This means only one thing: few ads, minimum bid only => Crisis.

On the other hand, on the SERP ads, it's full of them.
As a very small advertiser for my wife business, I cannot use Adsense for content (low ROI) and the Adsense for Search is getting stupid expensive for the main keywords, so I use Facebook and Instagram.

I'm on a skeleton crew already and this month I have to cover 40% of the expenses from my pocket.

So, yes, I hope better months will come. Usually after April.

[ubound]

I compared data for 1-12 January 2019 and 2020. This year I have more page views, but CPC is precisely the same. The problem is in clicks. People don't click as much, which can be for various reasons.

[ubound]

Regarding clicks, does anyone know why data for clicks under OVERVIEW and CLICKS tabs is so different?

[fearlessrick]

@ ubound: I noticed the same thing. Wildly different numbers and totals were different as well, which I suppose means in the Overview, they add in CPM. But there's no reason why clicks should be different under the two headings. Clicks are clicks, I thought. Maybe they're only showing "valid" clicks?

Interesting note, after I sent feedback twice early yesterday (Jan 12) morning to Google, expressing my utmost disgust and contempt for them and their practices, I had my best day since December 1. Also, they had dinged my home page for adult content (there is none) and I requested a review. Within 30 minutes the review was done (I guess) and ads were back up on my home page.

I'm having difficulty believing anything from Google these days. If they can perform a review within 30 minutes on a small publisher like me on a Sunday morning, what does that say about the company in general? That they respond quickly? No, to me it appears they're a rinky-dink operation that has everybody fooled that they're all high and mighty.

I've run the course with them. Even with the best day in over a month, my CPC was still only 14 cents. I don't know, but that seems to be pretty cheap to get somebody to your page. Maybe I should be arbitraging. Google needs to set some minimums that reflect actual costs of doing business in the real world, not their imaginary one.

Ah, I'm rambling, now. Another day, another small share of a dollar.

[ubound]

Re click reports: after posting the above question I realized that when I click on Clicks tab, CPC Bid filter is added. However, this doesn't explain anything because when I go to separate Bid Types report (left navigation button), I have very few CPM bid clicks. But in the default report the difference in clicks between Overview and Clicks tab is over a thousand clicks for last 7 days!

Another observation: I always thought personalized ads bring more revenue, but analyzing my data today I see that contextual ads have much higher CTR and bring more revenue. And comparing January 1-12 2019 and 2020, I see that this year there was way more personalized ads comparing to the last year, which explains the difference in income. I wonder if I should go ahead and switch it off. I guess I was wrong obsessing over CCPA compliance.

[fearlessrick]

Just checking some prior numbers, just impression RPM.
January 2005: 1.40
Jan. 2009: 0.97
Jan. 2010: 0.96
Jan. 2013: 1.22
Jan. 2014: 1.11
Jan. 2015: 0.80
Jan. 2016: 0.53
Jan. 2017: 0.40
Jan. 2018: 0.39
Jan. 2019: 0.45
Jan. 2020: 0.30

Just note that my site was banned in 2011-12 (for being gambling-related - it wasn't - not adult, even though the content is still largely the same and now they ban individual pages for adult content), but my earnings were solid the first few years after that.

I see a trend here and it's not a good one. Over the past 10 years RPM has been declining, but my costs have gone up. Hasn't everybody's? I do a lot of thinking and writing on economics and I think this may indicate something larger, that we're in a global depression and nobody wants to talk about it, so maybe I'm overreacting to my condition. Still, I believe I can do much better selling direct at this point. With Google, I'm going to make less than a third of what I did in 2013 and that's simply not acceptable.

Sorry if I'm boring everybody. I know I'm just thinking out loud but maybe some of you can relate. Between the low revenue and constant hassle over policies that are ambiguous and keep changing, I think it's time for a change.

[adrianTNT]

- Right now my main site gets 1/3 of the CPC it usually had.

- I am also affected by that thing where if you would have many individual pages in the site (around 500 000 listings in my case), then the ad would not show until many visitors hit the individual url a few times, that thing is horrible. Most of the urls display no ads, because each url is visited once every few weeks, with a few exceptions for popular urls.
I think this is pure incompetence^, they should come up with better ways of checking and validating urls.

- And in my experience they do put a cap on the earnings, they try to keep you in a recent average area, sometimes if I had a very good month (launched new sites or so), close to the end of the month, they start paying me lower and lower per click, so that I remain in the recent monthly average earnings. I noticed the opposite too, if a site is offline for a while or for some reason I didn't earn much, then close to the month end I would get ridiculous increase in CPC, so I remain in a recent average earnings per month.
Probably not true for everyone, but it is what I experienced. I use adsense for as long as I remember, 15-16 years.

[Grapetimes]

Does anyone know how long takes google to update your eligibility for matched content and what the requirements are for it?

[NickMNS]

@ubound

I always thought personalized ads bring more revenue... ...I wonder if I should go ahead and switch it off.

Adsense works on an auction system, if there would have been more contextual ads at a bid prices above the price your are getting for personalized ads then those ads would have been displayed. But that wasn't the case. By blocking ads such as personalized ads, or any type of ads, you are reducing demand and thus lowering the bid price further. This will almost certainly result in you getting more contextual ads but the price (RPM) of those ads will all be lower.

Contextual ads can produce a good return, but the problem generally is that there is limited demand for ads in one specific niche. Personalized ads overcome this limitation by basing the ads on the user's preference thus making the context in which they appear irrelevant. This is good, because a given user will have many interests and the probability is pretty good that there is an advertiser out there somewhere that is willing to pay to get that specific user's attention. There should be a relatively constant demand for personalized ads. The bad news is that these ads are website agnostic and thus can appear anywhere at any time, so even though demand is high so is supply (as there is no shortage of publishers). This keeps prices low.

[TheEnigma]

Comparing my Website vs Youtube, in December I earned 2.4 times as much per Youtube View compared to a Pageview on my website.

And what's interesting is only half my monthly views on Youtube were actually monetized.

[Web01]

@fearlessrick and some others, please let me know what type of niche you run base on saying google block your homepage for adult content let me know the type of niche you run with AdSense this matters alot niche really matter for AdSense alot if you deal with sport website u got no issues with them just be pushing traffic , on the other hand if you run some entertainment or gambling website or some likely adults stuff with AdSense am sorry you can't get what you want that much and may have some little issues with them. However, AdSense earnings does not stable it varies and that's how they works but this year hasn't been good but I know they will come up back but let's be sincere to ourselves niche really matters on Adsense that's what they use to serve you the ads your niche determines the ads they will serve your website so let's try and understand this alot.

[Web01]

However, let me make this clear to us today.
AdSense pay per click and it depends on the countries that clicks on your ads that was serve on your website if some countries like United States, United kingdom, u noted Arab Emirates, and some other countries that have high rates on AdSense visited your site and click on your ads you will be smiling every day have gone so much research on them and have learn alots on how they work so the most important thing is to drive traffic from all over the world and no matter what you will get some of the countries I listed above but may not be much but it will help your earnings very well but mind you your niche is more important in AdSense if you wanna enjoy them and push massive traffic .

[Fuzzyfish1000]

@adrianTNT - I've experienced the same thing over the years (Adsense & DFP) - whereby my earnings will be oddly similar to the month before or an average; even when there's been surges or drops in traffic. My speculation was that they'd put an artificial ceiling on your earnings as well, and you had to push against it for a time before you'd go up - which would make sense, to prevent publishers faking traffic/clicks or wiping out advertisers with sudden traffic spikes.

2019 was horrible - we had our RPM drop massively in April, and although it crept back up during the year, I think this was more as a result of us tweaking. I think the issue may be something that @Mentat suggested - huge amounts of new publishers, but fixed pool of advertisers, which means that CPMs will only go down. Problem is, that will be true on all platforms - as it's a basic supply/demand issue.

My traffic is up marginally on last year (about 10%), but my mtd earnings are down 50% - clicks are up but RPMs down. My understanding is that's based on what the market will pay, and the auction system - if advertisers aren't spending, publishers aren't earning, and if there's a glut of publishers, then supply exceeds demand and the price will drop.

We plugged in a header-bidder mid-last year - that helped plug the gap a little bit, but only brought us back to near where we'd been before.

My solution unfortunately is to try to find alternative revenue streams - such as affiliates, subscriptions, courses, etc. Google isn't the reliable source of income that it used to be (I've been doing this about 20 years).

[adrianTNT]

Can you guys see this (14 sec) video please ? [youtu.be...]

Maybe someone from Google can admit there is a problem there. I think they eider have bugs or they just don't feel like giving any earnings to publishers anymore.

This is is what I get every day, I refresh the page, I get less and less earnings, this is ridiculous.
Normally it would not be a problem, I understand that some might be invalid, but last weeks I noticed this every day, this is why I was ready to record it. And this happens in same period when I get less and less earnings, even thou traffic and traffic sources are normal and steady.

[Mentat]

14 January was a new low for me as payment.
This is really brutal.

[Web01]

@Mentat am telling you yesterday earning was so bad despite the traffic and clicks it drops badly let's hope for the best we are in the half of the month let's see the next two weeks how it rolls hope for the best we don't give up .

[skaterpunk]

hope for the best we are in the half of the month let's see the next two weeks how it rolls hope for the best we don't give up.

I gave up hope and fairy dust about 6 months ago, and went back to working at a job. I may stay in the game as a hobbyist project, which is why I still lurk this forum.

This article is an enlightening read. People in the middle of nowhere with a large web presence. I don't think many of us publishers fully realize the vast size of competition. I equate being a web publisher to trying to be an actor. Only a small percentage succeed, while the rest struggle waiting tables and barely getting by, hoping for that big break.

[reuters.com...]

[fearlessrick]

After one relatively good day on the 12th, Adsense has gone back to the usual suckiness. So has my Media.net, which has been horrible for the past two-three weeks.

Today, I'm looking at about 7 cents a click. I simply cannot get enthused about the new paradigm of Ramen for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Publishers should remind themselves that THEY made Google, with the content of their sites and their own hard work. Google made billions by "organizing" our content. This is what we have gotten.

I'll have to admit it was good for some time, many years, but right now, it appears to be a non-starter as a business model. Looking at my pages, I know I can induce people to pay me $10-20-30 a month for run-of-site with marginal tracking on my site and be done with all the rules and nonsense of Google and the other ad aggregators.

I do not run a big site by any means, and, being semi-retired, I can settle for less than most people younger than me, but I also know when I'm getting shafted, and this isn't feeling very loving.

Google definitely throttles earnings. I am earning almost exactly what I did a year ago despite impressions up 40% and clicks up 44%. Tell me how they're not comparing what I did last year and trying to replicate that?

Long run, many of us will be better off doing direct sales. I founded and ran as many as seven newspapers at a time back in the 80s all funded by advertising. It's not that hard to find loyal, paying customers. The internet is your oyster.

[adrianTNT]

I just did a search for "google earnings report date" and it says: "Earnings announcement* for GOOGL: Feb 03, 2020", funny ...

Can this be related ? A company needs to report nice earnings to get more investors or to satisfy current shareholders, could it be that google pays publishers less in order to get a bigger cut this month before earnings/profit report ?

[fearlessrick]

That's very doubtful. Google has more ways to cook the books than stealing from publishers. There was a time when regulators had significant oversight of corporations whose shares are sold to the public. Those days died in 2007-09. See a movie or read the book by Michael Lewis, "The Big Short" for a glimpse of how corrupt the corporate world has become, starting with the banks. It's surely "trickled down" to other corporations. These days, big corporations cannot be readily trusted and the people providing oversight are bought and paid for.

What's happening is that the big publishers get the best ads, the best deals, etc., while the small publishers get crumbs. If Google had truly been a company that was "revolutionary, fair, and not evil" they would have offered some shares to publishers. They never did that, did they?

I always knew that Google couldn't be trusted to keep the juice flowing to everybody, and honestly, it's probably not all their fault. Like I usually say, it was a good run. Now, on to bigger and better things.

[Sissi]

My RPM (2 digits) has halfen again in the last 3 days.

We thought that 2019 was the worst , but unfortunatly we will see more to come.

I can confirm that Adsense manually „finetune“ the revenues by ceilling, this is my experience.

I m afraid that one day they will reduce the publishers to a limited number of premiums adopting certain criterias, using the majority of their ads contingent for research results where there is no need for them to share the the revenues.

Solution: reduce the costs by eliminating websites with low return and consider Adsense as a hobby and not a as reliable source of revenues anymore (I m still thankful to Adsense for the past revenues).

[Mentat]

There are a billion publishers and not so much supervision from Google.

As a former big publisher, I can tell you that the bidding system is the same, the only difference was the fact that you could implement with their approval a lot of non-standard positions/banners etc

The problem was that the AdSense account manager was changed ~ 2-3 months so the communication was awful.

We all see the same junk ads because there are no good ads.
The big players are studying the market and making budgets, asking for an even lower payment, so the "old days" are gone!

[leebow]

I would consider myself a “larger” publisher - getting about 8 to 10 million page views a month.

My cpc is going down just the same as everyone else.

Since 2015 which was my best year, it’s gone down each year. 2020 looks no different with a drop of 20% compared to 2019 (which was lower than 2018, etc)

It’s not google - it’s just as someone has said, there are less advertisers using adwords, and the ones who are using it are paying less.

If I could show you my stats - you’d see the same page views since 2012 - the same clicks (as the site design hasn’t changed), the only thing going down is cpc.

You can overlay any year over the other and they are identical, the high months, low months, etc.

Just cpc going down as advertisers pay less.

[KaseyM]

Anyone else stuck?