January 2021 AdSense Earnings and Observations

A very pleasant surprise this morning.

[azlinda]

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System: The following 11 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/5018422.htm [webmasterworld.com] by martinibuster - 3:29 am on Jan 2, 2021 (utc -5)

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A very pleasant surprise this morning. After endless months of 30% clawbacks, it was only a little under 2% for December.

[azlinda]

I've been unable to see the dashboard for many hours now. I keep getting this message:

We apologize for the inconvenience, but we are unable to process your request at this time. Our engineers have been notified of this problem and will work to resolve it.

Is anyone else having this problem?

[allhearts]

Not here @azlinda, been fine all day for me, but I do get that message periodically.

[ember]

azlinda, no, but numbers are really off the mark today.

NickMNS, can't first price auctioning lead to bidding wars, increasing bids?

[NickMNS]

NickMNS, can't first price auctioning lead to bidding wars, increasing bids?

Unfortunately not, as only a single price is submitted per auction participant.

[Niresh12495]

Yeah every participant submit bid, the highest bidder is chosen. That is called bidding war.

[allhearts]

@ember

Yeah, Monday was a horrible day here as well.

[Niresh12495]

@ember yeah cpc got down to 0.16$.

[Lisa01]

What's your average cpc, Niresh?

[Niresh12495]

@Lisa01 Around 0.25$, i get traffic from all around the world. What about yours, What is your average cpc?

[Lisa01]

Mine is 0.15.

[NickMNS]

Yeah every participant submit bid, the highest bidder is chosen. That is called bidding war.

No,

a bidding war is (requires an Open ascending-bid auction):
I bid 1$, you bid 2$, then I bid 3$, you bid $3.50 I bid $4, you $4.25, I bid $4.50, and you walk away and I win the auction on the item that is objectively worth $3.

First price bidding is:
I estimate the value at $3, I expect others to bid the same, I place a bid a $3.25
You estimate the value at $2.75, you expect others to bid the same, you place a bid a $3.00.
I win the auction at at $3.25

Second price bidding is:
I estimate the value at $3, but I'm willing to spend more because I really want the item, so I can pay up to $5 so I bid $5
You estimate the value at $2.75, but you have a tight budget and can live with out the item, you place a bid at $3.25.
I win the auction at $3.26

A bidding war can only ever occur in open auction because the other auction type don't allow the buyers to make subsequent bids.

[Niresh12495]

If you use GPT tag ads, you can often see, a loaded ad being replaced within in 1-2 seconds, it means there has been an ad that was willing to pay more for that adslot, So with ADX every network has thousands of ads, Adnetwork gonna prebid (prebid.js aka headerbidding) the highest paying ad they have, if several adnetworks are bidding for it. The adnetwork & ad that pays more would get displayed.

We all know any advertisers or neither Google will not be happy about paying Publishers more.

In the second price auction we get the second winning bid, In first price auction we get the First winning bid.

Always
Second is second,
First is First.

[wsj.com...]

Do you still think, Google wants to pay us more?

[NickMNS]

There is no point in trying to reason with you. My advice to you is that if you feel Google/AdSense is being dishonest or not paying you your fair share then you should take your inventory to another ad network.

For the record...

Do you still think, Google wants to pay us more?

The question is very presumptuous. I don't still think, as I have never thought nor claimed that Google was wanting to pay us more. I will claim that Google/Adsense wants to be paid more and given that AdSense splits the revenue with the publisher of the ad, the publisher's goal to be paid more aligns directly with Google/Adense's goal. Thus when Google gets paid more the publisher does as well. There are certainly plenty of example where Google's goals and publishers' goals don't align. For example, adding more Google content to search results. This clearly skims traffic away from publishers' sites and keeps the ad revenue solely in Google's pockets. But the auction format is a rare instance where goals align.

If Google were to provide an auction format that benefited the ad buyers it would no longer be maximizing its own profits. The switch to first price auction in AdX is either due to increased competition or to the fact that once the ad buyers adapt to the change in format, there will likely be very little difference. Note that there is far more competition in the programmatic/header bidding market than in the "Adsense" market, and that is the most likely explanation why it hasn't changed.

Note if Google wanted to take more of your pie all they would need to do is reduce the payout ratio from 68% to some lower value, they wouldn't need to incur the large expense of changing all their systems and infrastructure.

[Niresh12495]

There is no point in trying to reason with you. Yes, i agree with that.
I also firmly believe google is being dishonest with its publishers using its dominance position which prevents publishers from maximizing their revenue.

Everything that I explained was my opinion from my research online, it could also be wrong sometime, we aren’t right 100% of the time.

Feeling today adsense earnings got even lower than monday, anybody else?

[gatormark]

@Niresh12495

My numbers are great today and are up 55% over January of 2020. My CPC is down from December, which is normal.

[NickMNS]

@Niresh RE the linked WSJ article. This likely relates to ads in search, in which you play no part and which makes up the bulk of Google's ad revenue. But if it does include AdSense, and since AdSense pays you 68% of all revenue of ads that appear on your site, that makes you an unwilling participant.

[Niresh12495]

That doesn’t related to Search, Read fully and read similar articles.

[allhearts]

@Niresh12495

Tried the fixed ad sizes for a few days, the result wasn't good for me, CPC was double less what I was making with responsive, I am glad I tried though, it just didn't work for me. I guess it's just the beginning of the year, hopefully things can only go up from here, my earnings are down 20% from Jan of 2020.

[gatormark]

@allhearts

What is your traffic like compared to January of 2020? Also, in what country do you live?

[allhearts]

@gatormark

Traffic is up 40% so far this year then it was last year at this time.

I'm based in Canada but most of my traffic is from the US.

[allhearts]

How was everyone's day today?

CPC slowly creeping upwards the last couple of days, anyone notice that as well?

[allhearts]

Has anyone else seen this notification on the adsense dashboard tonight?

"Provide your seller information with sellers.json"

I have updated my visibility to transparent and entered my domain name in account settings, but would love to know more about it if anyone knows.


Thanks

[not2easy]

Ad networks use sellers.json, some previous discussions here can help you learn more. Details about sellers.json: [webmasterworld.com...]

[allhearts]

@not2easy

thank you, that did help.

[Lisa01]

I don't understand why my CTR has gone down this month.

[allhearts]

@Lisa01

I don't think it's just a you thing, mine has as well, including CPC and RPM, I think it's more of a January thing.

[gatormark]

@NickMNS

NickMNS, can't first price auctioning lead to bidding wars, increasing bids?

Unfortunately not, as only a single price is submitted per auction participant.

This is not completely true NICK. There are two types of “bidding wars.”

1) When a single bidder can submit multiple bids to usurp bids of other bidders. Obviously, this is the preferred method from the publisher’s end because it requires fewer bidders to raise the price quickly.

2) You can technically have a bidding war even if you can only submit one bid. Unfortunately, this method requires many bidders for the “war.”

Both are bidding wars, but the first is more effective and preferred in quickly increasing bids.

[crissdinesh]

CPC went down in Jan 2021. Overall 35% less revenue compared to Dec 2020.

[allhearts]

@crissdinesh

A little worse for me here, I had a good December as well but just a dreadful January so far.

[Lisa01]

I understand the CPC thing, but i don't get why my CTR has halved