Huge permanent drop in earnings after blocking advertiser! Any ideas?

[fin2red]

Hello,

We have a website that has some good traffic and gives good money (an extra average salary at the end of the month for 2 people).

Both of us have AdExchange/AdX.

The way we do it is that we randomize which client gets a spot at page load (50%/50%), so consistently, we both get more or less the same every day. It's been working quite well.

Since a few weeks ago, we noticed we were seeing LOADS of ads by an Ad-blocker, saying "REMOVE ALL ADS »", which got us a bit worried. It's literally telling OUR users to install their AdBlocker, to remove ads from their browser.

My colleague, a bit concerned about this, seeing this ad appearing so frequently, went ahead into AdManager, and blocked the Advertiser and all ads from this Advertiser (under Protections and Creatives). I haven't done that in my AdManager.

This caused a huge daily drop in earnings for my colleague. So, 1 or 2 days later, my colleague unblocked everything back again, expecting the earnings to go back to normal the next day.

However, it didn't. Eventually those specific ads also finished their campaign, but STILL, no improvements seen in the earnings, up to this day.

It's like the AdX account of my colleague got a permanent penalty at EVERY possible level:

- Less earnings
- Less CPM
- Less Impressions
- Less on Ad Unit
- Less on Placement
- Less on each Country Everything. (while I continue to have absolutely no impact)

We've tried looking everywhere - Pricing rules, Yield Groups, whether ads are going to AdSense rather than AdX, switching fully to one of our accounts temporarily, etc etc...

Is there anything that can be done here?

It's just been too long since, and we see no signs of improvement.

Thank you very much.

[NickMNS]

Hello fin2red welcome to Webmasterworld.

Let me start with the standard boiler plate response for situation like these..

As you likely know ads appear based on auction system, which means that the ad that finally appears is the highest paying ad available at the time. When blocking ads you are saying "no thank you I rather be paid less than show your ad". Which is totally valid, I do it when appropriate. Blocking ad blocking ads is not only ironic but it is also almost a duty. The point is blocking ads comes at a cost. Typically, it shouldn't be a large cost, in fact it should be barely noticeable. But, if demand is low, I suppose it could be noticeable. Seeing many ads such as ad-blocker ads is typical sign of low demand.

Ad markets are notoriously unstable, one day you can earn 10% of daily average and the next 300%, it is entirely possible, albeit based on on your description unlikely, that the two events are unrelated.

Ok! But that is not really the question... It is more interesting than that.
If I understood correctly there are two accounts serving ads to this page, one account blocked these ads and earning dropped whereas the other didn't and there was no change in earnings. Is this correct? Did the questionable ads appear in both in both accounts with a similar number of impressions? When one account blocked the ads, what happened with the ads on the other account? How were the ads blocked, were they blocked at the account level, or the ad level? Are both Adsense and Adx enabled on the account such that on sold inventory is passed from one network to the other? If so did you see a shift in the impressions allocated from to the other?

Sorry, I am asking questions instead of answering yours, but this is an interesting situation that one doesn't come across very often, and with more detail I, we (others here at WW) can provide a more detailed answer.

[fin2red]

Hi NickMNS,

Thanks very much for your reply.
Yeah, most of what you said is already stuff both of us know (still, thank you very much for being detailed). We have many years of experience with AdSense/AdX, and our website is doing pretty well for years, and we investigate a lot and do a lot, with AdManager and other integrations, to boost our revenue.

Unfortunately, we were just not expecting a *permanent* penalty just because we blocked an advertiser.

Answering to your questions:

> "If I understood correctly there are two accounts serving ads to this page, one account blocked these ads and earning dropped whereas the other didn't and there was no change in earnings. Is this correct?"

Correct.

> "Did the questionable ads appear in both in both accounts with a similar number of impressions?"

As far as we know, yes, they were appearing to both publishers. Those ads are "gone" now, so no longer appear.

> "How were the ads blocked, were they blocked at the account level, or the ad level?"

AdManager -> Delivery -> Creatives -> Ad review center -> search for an ad of that advertiser -> "Block account" (which blocks advertiser)
(also blocked some individual ads)

AdManager -> Protections -> Advertiser URLs -> type the URL of advertiser

All are unblocked now anyway. But that's what he did.

> "Are both Adsense and Adx enabled on the account such that on sold inventory is passed from one network to the other?"

Yup - our AdX serves AdSense inventory effectively, and all those options for "using AdSense to maximize revenue" are enabled.
All our ad units / line items use AdExchange.

> "If so did you see a shift in the impressions allocated from to the other?"

When we check Historical and AdExchange Historical reports, we only see earnings in AdExchange. AdSense is at $0 and 0 impressions.
So, only AdExchange is being used.

Thank you!

[NickMNS]

When we check Historical and AdExchange Historical reports, we only see earnings in AdExchange. AdSense is at $0 and 0 impressions.
So, only AdExchange is being used.

This seems very strange to me. is AdSense set to fill impression at some price floor. Eg: if bids get less than 0.25$ cpm switch to Adsense?

[fin2red]

> "This seems very strange to me."

No, that's very normal.

All our line items are using Ad Exchange, and none is using AdSense or yielding to it.

That's very expected to see $0 in AdSense. Means everything us using Ad Exchange.

[NickMNS]

In an ideal world all networks should compete for you inventory. Thus if price begins to fall within one network due to a lack of demand, then buyers from the other network would start filling orders and your price should remain relatively stable. But what you are describing is that demand/price has fallen with Adx and AdSense has not increased its share. That you can get 0 AdSense impressions normally seems potentially like an extreme case but it is not unusual per-se. It means to me that Adx outperforms AdSense.

Now why is that? Is it because you haven't set up AdSense correctly in AdManager, or is it as you suspect that there is some "penalty" impact the account as a whole. You would need to rule out the former in order to confirm the later.

[fin2red]

AdSense is delivered through Ad Exchange. The fact that we have 0% AdSense in the reports isn't the point at all. It's been ALWAYS like that since we've had AdExchange.

Our problem at the moment is to understand why my colleague's CPM, Impressions, etc, aren't improving at all, since we unblocked the advertiser and since advertiser stopped advertising.

[blackhat]

@NickMNS +

May I ask a question that is do you think turn off the interested based ads are a good thing for adsense? Or every website is different need test?