AdSense Earnings and Observations - January 2023

[dolcevita]

I wish you a new, fresh start, much better than all previous years. Let's see how it goes in January.

[tangor]

Not looking good compared to January 2022.

There is an impending global recession on the horizon---OR THE FEAR OF ONE---that will chill a whole lot of economic activity, not just on the web. Keep that in mind. Having been through this a few times over the last 30 years I can safely say that EVENTUALLY things will get better once all the jitters and financial boondoggles are managed. Might be next year... might be second half of 2023. It won't happen in the next few days, or weeks.

Then again, cheerful soul that I am, it COULD get even worse! :)

[frostitomik]

Of course there is a global recession that has just started, but how do you explain 50-75% drop in CPC compared to 10-12 years ago? (last recession). If you count in inflation, there should be no drop in ads revenue compared to previous recession, but a slight increase. Or did the value of a US visitor magically drop so much in 2023?

I think the main cause of this are low quality ads, pop up ads, sticky ads, 6+ ad units on one page etc. It's terrible for both visitors and publishers/advertisers. Google f***ed it up.

[edited by: frostitomik at 1:16 am (utc) on Jan 6, 2023]

[ember]

With a recession already here or looming, advertisers are pulling back, saving money and waiting to see what happens. Fewer of them decreases competition in the ad market and lowers epc for us.

[frostitomik]

Also, a lot of people are now using adblockers because of all those new types of ads and popups, which lowers the revenue even further. Those times when you could make money so easily with Adsense are definitely over.

[tangor]

how do you explain 50-75% drop in CPC compared to 10-12 years ago?

Pretty simple. Ads 10-12 years ago where higher quality. Folks had more disposable income. G had not yet changed the game, learning over time where they could cut yours and make theirs...

Today, even stupid users won't click ads since they don't have any money to dispose of (too busy getting heat, fuel for cars, or simply buying food at the local market).

Things will get thin as advertisers are withdrawing their budgets, scaling back, and probably laying off workers as well.

Believe me, I would love to be proved wrong, but past experience has shown all too well that when money is tight ALL OVER FOR EVERYONE INCLUDING GOVERNMENTS it will trickle down to the lowest levels of income potentials.

ONE WAY to get through something like this is to grab bootstraps, cold-call, find, or court and corral local or regional businesses to buy ad space on your HIGHLY VALUED AND POPULAR website---an advertising pitch that could benefit from an exposure on your world wide internet property. In fact, that's where I made most of my money, back in the day, with adsense only a minor thought, at best.

YMMV

[unendoro]

Is it me or stats are frozen?

[unendoro]

Is it me only or the stats are frozen?

[Bobb11]

I have also stats frozen. In Google Analytics all function, but in adsense its frozen.

[pawas]

Its a bloodbath over here. Large site, over 2 million visitors a month. Page RPM dropped from $6 from January 2022 to $3. A wooping 50% drop in revenue.

[robzilla]

how do you explain 50-75% drop in CPC compared to 10-12 years ago?

Smart pricing? Better ad targeting? More competition? Better invalid click detection? 10-12 years is a long time, a lot has changed.

[NeapTide]

The upcoming recession /economic crisis would be the worst in history with people turning on each other for food. Inflation is now the problem worldwide. That didn't happen before.

[DarkSide83]

Do you think that the upcoming recession/economic crisis is the only reason for the massive drop in revenues? My revenues also dropped about 50% compared to the year before. I'm wondering how bad it will get once the crisis hits.

[Breathofair33]

Agree with everyone. Times are definitely changed for Ad's + AdSense (forget a recession, only adding fuel). Most boomers I talk to use browsers to block ads, they aren't dumb. I don't want to place a blocking control to prompt them to disable ad blocking before visiting my site, Google penalty. Even so, I agree long-term revenue is selling space on your high-quality site. AdSense hopefully remains a side-earner for me long-term. Nothing out there even compares, I really hope AdSense survives this.

[DarkSide83]

Yes, this could explain the long-term trend of AdSense revenue. But for me it started to get really bad in July/August 22. 2021 was a pretty good year.

[ember]

Most boomers I talk to use browsers to block ads, they aren't dumb.

I'm a boomer, although a young one, and no, we're not dumb.

[tangor]

Smart pricing? Better ad targeting? More competition? Better invalid click detection? 10-12 years is a long time, a lot has changed.

I believe the above is way more definitive for the lower rates seen in the last two-three years than anything else. G had to learn how to police the clicks (most of them invalid) over the years and has finally achieved better control.

In future "success" will look more like "maintaining" an income stream (at lower than previous years). Money can be made, but great riches are not likely. "Sustenance", just not "plenty".

Internal ad sales (you go find 'em and sell 'em) are the money market. Then again, your site should be extra special stellar to command the best pricing! Changes the game. Significantly.

[Mentat]

Its a bloodbath over here. Large site, over 2 million visitors a month. Page RPM dropped from $6 from January 2022 to $3. A wooping 50% drop in revenue.

Same here, but different metrics and much more traffic.
From a healthy profit in 2022, December '22 is loss and January we project -50% loss (I do not speak about the profit), so 50% of the crew will be "let go" this month, brutally.

Since the end of September, with google trafic updates and now with a 2/3 lower eCPM, is like a perfect, quiet storm.

There are no more money, pufff!
It's like we provoke this recession.

[fearlessrick]

Anybody here can agree or disagree with me on this, but publishers using Adsense have to understand that we are, to a degree, targets. We are the small businesses the globalists didn't kill during the (you know... the thing we're not supposed to talk about) because we were online, not brick and mortar.

There are certainly other factors, but, unless you've been living in a hole in the ground the past three years, any of us who publish anything approaching honest journalism or opinion are pushing against a rising tide that accelerated with November, 2020 and Ukraine last year.

It's a crying shame what some people are doing to the world. Like George Carlin said many years ago, “The owners of this country know the truth: It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

I figure I'm fortunate, as I made decent money with G leading up to my retirement years (I'm 69). I don't really need the extra $$ now, but I still work on my site regularly, as I have the time to do so. Too bad it doesn't pay much.

The good news is that when everybody becomes poorer, the money you're now making will go further. Inflation will turn to recession and prices will come down (there are fewer and fewer consumers every day) unless they starve or freeze us to death first.

I hope what I said doesn't get deleted or banned. I've had enough of that the past few years.

Keep fighting, everybody. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

[frostitomik]

I used to believe such conspiracy theories as well. That the elites are planning a global takeover and normal people will all lose their jobs/businesses and become slaves to the government. Believe me, they are not as smart as you think. All of these events are just series of very bad decisions made by dumbasses.

[DarkSide83]

We should get back to topic ;-)

[dolcevita]

Despite the negative trend in the last three months, in terms of RPM and CPC, i can't complain.

My revenue remained more or less the same as last year. 2020 was difficult and critical, since the core update resulted in a 35% decrease in my revenue. But in the meantime, the situation improved slightly so that 2022 was as stable as 2021.

I still make a solid living exclusively from my websites. Not like before 2020, but quite solid.

I also remember with nostalgia the time when the CPC was €40-€45. What was the revenue then? Wow. Today I am happy with €20-€25

[DarkSide83]

CPC of 20-25 €? That’s impressive! What industry are you in?

[Coldfaun]

Also my revenue from youtube has decreased with 40-50% compared to December.
Much lower than last year January, the views are the same.

[dolcevita]

@DarkSide83
The industry is technology, about network-tools, privacy, security, anonymity, geolocation etc...
For the last 3 months, CPC has been moving around 18-20 on average. It was the lowest during the December holidays. In the period from July to September around 25-27.

[Breathofair33]

last 2 days have suddenly seen increase in RPM and CPC, what I would be expecting this time. See how long this holds.

[frostitomik]

You are very lucky with such high CPC. These days, with the increasing hosting costs, it's much better to have a low traffic site with high CPC, than a high traffic site and low CPC. My high traffic sites CPC is around 0,1-0,2 USD and I need to pay 150 USD a month for webhosting lol.

[dolcevita]

It seems that my last message was deleted, although I didn't get a reason why. In any case, I think that $150 is a lot for web hosting.

[DarkSide83]

@dolcevita:

Thanks for the info. Really impressive. My CPC is more like 0.2-0.3€. Gaming industry with a lot of traffic from India and Indonesia. :-)

[dolcevita]

India and Indonesia are usually very low with average CPC below 0.2.
USA traffic is highest RPM and CPC.

[Pixby8]

The fall off I've experienced from mid December, continuing on into January, of CPC, as well as impressions, has been astounding. We're talking 70% down, on average. I'm not quite so sure this is economy related. Felt to me like Google flipped a switch about December 9th, changing how the technology works. I think they started penalizing content based on how far it is removed from the homepage. A few days ago I redesigned a lot of my sites to serve all content only on the homepage URL (noticing that homepage impression was so much greater) and, so far, for two days, I've seen a return to somewhat normal levels, although CPC is still a little down. Could all be a coincidence, or cognitive bias on my part. But, I feel like a change was made that drastically reduced impressions, and CPC, the further away from the homepage the content becomes. Wasn't like that before.