AdSense Earnings and Observations - May 2023

[MMedi26]

Month starting off pretty bad.

[edited by: not2easy at 5:41 pm (utc) on May 1, 2023]
[edit reason] New Thread for May 2023 [/edit]

[csdude55]

I just got the email today from Adsense, reporting data for April.

Pageviews were up 9%!

Revenue was down 5% >:-(

My revenue really started to drop in 2016. At the time I blamed it on an unstable market, leading businesses to hoard their money instead of spending on advertising. That's around the same time that Fakebook got popular, too, so ad budgets were being divided.

The COVID hit, and everything fell off a cliff. Even direct sell ads disappeared; I went from over 100 direct sell ads to 3!

Now that's mostly over, but nothing has come back. Many of my old advertisers went bankrupt (or died), and Adsense is getting worse every month. My sites with 15 million monthly pageviews are quickly becoming an expensive hobby, and I have no idea what I can do about it.

[Sissi]

As AI is already offered in the US do we see any impact on the revenues already ?
Not according to my stats

[rafraf]

april
pageviews: - 11%
earnings: +15%

march
pageviews: + 14%
earnings: +30%

Now that's mostly over, but nothing has come back. Many of my old advertisers went bankrupt (or died), and Adsense is getting worse every month. My sites with 15 million monthly pageviews are quickly becoming an expensive hobby, and I have no idea what I can do about it.

I helped myself totaly reorganising the ads, that means using admanager + adsense, throw away auto ads, interstitial and anchor using admanager not adsense etc + lightning loading speed (literally)

[Breathofair33]

csdude55 + whats 15 mil pageviews roughly net vs 2016 for you now? USD?

[Breathofair33]

@Sissi Google will do everything it can to prevent this I hope. Their AI will incorporate into the Display Network i hope..

Short term, no impact

[csdude55]

csdude55 + whats 15 mil pageviews roughly net vs 2016 for you now? USD?

I don't think I'm allowed to give real numbers... but I think it's OK for me to say that my PPC revenue now is roughly 1/8th of what it was in 2016.

[MMedi26]

Yesterday was pretty good. The first few hours of today are terrible. Can’t wait to see how the day ends. Adsense is so inconsistent these days.

[ember]

Turning on more auto ads helped with ad targeting, which increased CTR, but now ads are off target again, causing very inconsistent earnings. One day great and the next day abysmal. You'd think Google could get a handle on this.

[gatormark]

May 2023 compared to May 2022...

May 12...
Page views are up 1.3%.
Clicks are up 8.9%.
Earnings are down 9.6%.

May 22...
Page views are up 4.7%.
Clicks are up 12.3%.
Earnings are down 3.3%.

I guess that's progress...

[C_Zalcman]

For all. Disable personalization! Personalized ads = low CPC, CTR..., because all money goes to contract parties, not publishers.

adsbygoogle.requestNonPersonalizedAds = 1;

Try this for a week, at minimum!

[C_Zalcman]

... if you will get more impressions for contextual than personalized ads, you will have the same income as five years ago, this AI crap started about 2020, the stupid personalization...

[loboblahz]

I ran a test on 3 of my websites (different niches) with requestNonPersonalizedAds=1.

I will report back in 7 days.

[C_Zalcman]

It's not easy to achieve to increase contextual impressions. By using requestNonPersonalizedAds=1 will only help a little, because it is important what settings the visitors have at: [adssettings.google.com...] and chrome://settings/privacySandbox

[Mentat]

Well, the only new thing is that I'm now used with the very low earnings.
I've let go 50% of my staff ;(

[Breathofair33]

Regarding Personalised Ads testing...to do so for your entire publisher account:

Brand Safety -> Content -> Blocking Controls -> Ad Serving -> Personalised Ads

I'm under 1 million pageviews a month so I have no problem testing this across all properties at once to see given recent lack of earnings. Will report back in a few days or so...

User-based ads:Blocked
Additional ad technology vendors: Blocked
First Party Cookies: Allowed
Use First party cookies for personalization: Allowed

[Sissi]

Stats frozen today?

[not2easy]

Just a heads up for people serving ads in EEA and UK, Google has issued a new consent management notification - details here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[gatormark]

@Sissi, I do not think the stats are frozen. The end of the USA school year for many schools was yesterday. Depending on your audience, that could be the problem.

[gatormark]

@Breathofair33, yes, please report back. All of my Ad serving options are off.

[Sissi]

@gatomark can confirm were frozen and against noon back to normal with a better trend this week

[dolcevita]

Finally something positive. I have very good stats for a week now. I added a new website that I let grow and mature for 3 years. I added it 10 days ago and not only it have the highest CPC and RPM, but it also boosted other websites so they improved as well. I hope that the positive trend will last for a long time.

[gatormark]

Weird numbers today. Some of my small websites are doing big numbers. It must be a result of the Memorial Day weekend in the USA.

[Mentat]

Summer, nice weather, Holidays and the School is ending.
The crisis has been "avoided", see you in the Autumn, another Panic Mode.

[MMedi26]

I seen a bit of a rise last week and now I’m noticing a decline starting yesterday.

[Sissi]

@gatomark
Same here some of my insignifiant sites are back doing well

[MMedi26]

Terrible day. Clicks are decreasing again.

[Mentat]

Memorial day seems to be good for me.
Strange.

[MMedi26]

Mines showed signed of being good at like 2am but around 10am, I seen the decline. Another slump day with barely any clicks.

[dolcevita]

I think that the combination of auto Ads with self-placed Adsende Ads above the fold, due to Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), is the best way for maximum monetization.
Namely, by determining the position for Ads that is above the fold, with the definition of min-height, negative CLS will be prevented.

[MMedi26]

Ending month down at least 10% compared to last year. This year really doesn’t look like it’s a good year for Adsense.