June 2021 AdSense Earnings and Observations

[martinibuster]

Kicking off this month's earnings and observations!

[SebMP]

What happened with Adsense?!
from 1500-2000 clicks to just 500 !

Organic Traffics (google search) is normal even there's a slight increase.
Visitors are increased by 30% from April.
Pageviews are normal
Impressions are down by 45%

PS: I do no payed traffics, I didn't change anything in SEO, for more than 10 months.

The problem started a week from now and still persist .

Please Is this normal or there is something I can do?

Thank you.

[TravelMan]

9% clawback.

Up on last month from < 2% to 9%

Changed nothing on the domain.

Good month though; earnings up, as was traffic.

Mildly annoying as traffic patterns globally were typically the same with so no real rhyme or reason as to the why.

Maybe it was that FB campaign. Who knows.

Would be great if the guys and gals at Adsense gave more granular insights in a simple to read format.

“These types of click from users from these regions were largely considered to be bots/accidental clicks/erroneous” etc

Never mind. Onwards :)

[edited by: TravelMan at 2:00 pm (utc) on Jun 1, 2021]

[CommandDork]

Google CEO's aim slightly off this month; his dart landing on 11.6% for clawback.

But ya, some more transparency with publishers regarding invalid clicks would help everyone in the chain.

[NickMNS]

Midway through may I said "May is the new January". It wasn't, things picked up in the second half and May finished higher than April, with ~1% clawback.

@TravelMan

Maybe it was that FB campaign. Who knows.

There is a lot evidence that the high clawbacks are related to FB, more specifically their use of Android webview "browser" (and Safari equivalent) that display your page from within their native app.

[NeapTide]

During my past 8 years with Adsense this is the first time I was struck with 20 percent claw back.

Firstly there is live claw back on daily basis then at the end of the month there is another claw back. Seems like Google's deep pockets are deeper than I thought. Who knows if they return monthly claw backed money to advertisers or put it in their own pockets.

[TravelMan]

@NickMNS I’ve read the odd anecdote too. Some of the FB stuff is quite useful in terms of brand building , hence the spend of course, maybe it’s worth adding a layer of referer type checking to switch ads off for those instances. I did dig in a little and the traffic wasn’t sufficient to add up to those 2000 + “invalid” ad clicks.

My cloudflare bot block and ASN settings were the same for May as they were in April, Page CTR was up from 1.84 in Apr to 2.06 in May (1.72% in March, 1.65% Feb ) so at the face of it you might think that that gradual uplift in click rate was the issue. The however is though, clawback was larger in Feb, so likely not. Who knows *shrug*

[NickMNS]

@NeapTide
See my post in last month thread at the bottom of page 4
[webmasterworld.com...]

@TravelMan
More insight would definitely be helpful.

[NeapTide]

@NickMNS good job for defending Google for no reason.

If there is hourly / daily clawback then clawbacks at the end of the month is mere filling their own deep pockets. &#128530;

[NickMNS]

@NickMNS good job for defending Google for no reason.

I'm not defending Google, I'm clarifying the interpretation of the Adsense reports.

You are making accusations of fraud and you feel quite confident that what you are claiming is true. That is fine. For myself, if I felt I was doing business with a partner/supplier/client that was committing fraud, I would immediately end that relationship. There are plenty of other ad-networks out there to choose from.

[JorgeV]

Hello,

If Google is fraudulently stealing money from publishers, then, why would they show it in the stats with clawbacks and removing clicks? Can't they simply not count some of the clicks, or lower their price BEFORE posting it?

By the way, as I said it numerous times, I have no more clawbacks, since I am blocking IP ranges from Datacenter...

[NickMNS]

I don't think anyone has an issue with concept that if there is an invalid click then it is fair that you not receive a benefit from the click. The problem as I see it is that publisher see the value of earnings (estimated) in their accounts go up, then (in near time, or at the end of the month) they see that value reduced. As if AdSense was taking money from them.

The real problem is that this is situation where one has a compounding of the two of the most difficult to avoid cognitive biases. Anchoring and Loss aversion. By showing an estimated amount for estimated earnings in your account, Adsense anchors a number, say $1000, you are now certain that you should get at least that amount. Moreover, for those that check their accounts frequently, one also see a number that is consistently increasing. So your expectation is that the next time you check the value has increased.

Now when AdSense reduces the amount, not only does it not meet your expectation you also feel like something was taken. Even if the first time you check the amount it is much higher than expected, if the next you check the amount has dropped you still feel slighted. This is loss averion.

What is the alternative, Adsense could not report "estimated earnings", it could simply send you check at the end of the month. You'd get what you get and you wouldn't get upset. But you have far less transparency. AdSense is being transparent, they have no obligation to do so, if they really wanted to steal from you then why would they show you that they are doing in it?

Who knows if they return monthly claw backed money to advertisers or put it in their own pockets.

It would be unlikely that advertisers are returned money, as they are likely never charged for the invalid clicks in the first place.

[en.wikipedia.org...]
[en.wikipedia.org...]

[NeapTide]

Do they also show you people how much they are returning to advertisers? Do you think the company involved in corporate tax evasion is honest to you.

[edited by: martinibuster at 5:18 am (utc) on Jun 2, 2021]
[edit reason] Edited for Rudeness. [/edit]

[ember]

If a corporation is not paying as much tax as you think it should, it is probably because it is following the tax laws that are written by people with money for people with money. Your quarrel is with the legislative bodies that write and pass the tax laws, not with the corporations doing what the law says they can.

I occasionally use Google display ads and I have received click credits when an ad runs beyond the timeframe I have set for it.

[SweetPotato]

3.38% Clawback. Very happy.

[azlinda]

After months of relatively low clawback, I was hit with 9% this month. I have not changed a thing. All my traffic is from U.S., Canada, Great Britain and Australia.

[ronron]

Back to 1.9% clawback for May. When I was getting huge clawbacks in 20-30% range for almost a year straight, majority were from two sources:

1) bots via datacenters
2) regular users on the site with fat fingers

1 was easy to deal with, but 2 was a little tricky. Basically just stopped showing ads to those particular users who fat finger.

[TravelMan]

@JorgeV how do you keep on top of new data centres springing up? How do you/did you identify them all?

@ronron haha, if pixel touch >= 120 {
$fatfinger = true;
}

[ronron]

^ lol that would work. I'd suspect G would already have algorithms to filter out such accidental clicks. Makes me wonder if these certain users are actually fat fingering or just plain old click happy. I know click happy users are notorious on platforms like OutBrain and Taboola.

[adsenseuser]

May was second highest month of 2021 although April had a better average day so 2nd or 3rd depending on how you look at it.

0.4% clawback for me.

[MayankParmar]

Some weird issues with AdSense. Ads not appearing in new posts immediately. 10-15 minutes delay and one ad is collapsed (I've only two ads). Hopefully a coverage issue or temporary bug.

[gatormark]

June is turning out to be a very strange month. Today was one of the better days for AdSense revenue this year even though June, July, and August are my down months. My niche’s traffic is lower because school is out in the USA, but CPC has jumped for some reason. Very strange, but good results.

[gatormark]

June is turning out to be a very strange month. Today was one of the better days for AdSense revenue this year even though June, July, and August are my down months. My niche’s traffic is lower because school is out in the USA, but CPC has jumped for some reason. Very strange, but good results.

Correction, CPC didn’t increase, the page RPM and CTR increased.

[ember]

Anyone tried Media.net's interscroller ads? They've sent me two emails about them, but I'm still not sure what they are. If I am interested, they will "integrate them seamlessly into [my] existing ad setup." That always makes me nervous.

[gatormark]

Anyone tried Media.net's interscroller ads? They've sent me two emails about them, but I'm still not sure what they are. If I am interested, they will "integrate them seamlessly into [my] existing ad setup." That always makes me nervous.

I have not, but I have used their other offerings. I just removed Media.net as backup ads from my websites because they performed horribly. In fact, I was using three different advertising programs and removed all of them but Adsense.

[ember]

I took media.net off years ago except for one ad block on one page. Earnings were 20% of Adsense. Tried them briefly again a couple of months ago, and earnings were even worse. So I doubt this interscroller ad - whatever it is - would be any better.

[NickMNS]

Interscroller ads are pretty neat in terms of UI.
Here is a demo:
[youtube.com...]

Now, how they perform and how they are perceived I have no idea, but they look pretty slick. One caveat I haven't actually come across one in the real world and I guess my impression would be much different as a user, they look pretty invasive. If they use the format to show something remotely spammy it could really freak someone out. I wouldn't trust Media.net to show ads in that format. But if AdSense offered it I would likely give it a try, albeit cautiously.

[ember]

Ah, one of those. I’ve seen them in the wild. They are kind of cool, but you’re right about not trusting Media.net. Thanks, NickMNS.

[Mentat]

This month SERP update destroyed my US traffic and 50% of my revenue.
Not a good month for my revenue.

[gatormark]

My traffic has plummeted 30,000 page views in one week, but my number of ad clicks and revenue are remaining consistent. Very strange numbers.