AdSense Earnings and Observations - August 2023

[gatormark]

Side note. It's August 1, and school is already starting here in the USA...certain states—one more month of the AdSense dead zone.

[edited by: not2easy at 5:38 pm (utc) on Aug 1, 2023]
[edit reason] New month, new thread / Split cleanup [/edit]

[Sissi]

Excellent start today
Followed by 50 % real time claw back….

[LucasPerez]

Good start every day CPC 0.20 or more, the problem is when the day goes by, and the clicks go up then the CPC drops drastically, CPC 0.04 or less.

It's like a tongue twister:
More clicks and fewer clicks don't matter, same income every day.

Personal conclusion:
fixed salary to publishers, no matter the clicks, the CPC ... Adsense is manipulating the statistics.

[Sissi]

This can be explained through this
[seroundtable.com...]

[allhearts]

Thank you @Sissi.

[not2easy]

The same news was posted here yesterday: [webmasterworld.com...]

[allhearts]

When we get desperate, we try different things, so I enabled "Anchor Ads" at the bottom of the pages for desktop/mobile to see if it helps any.

[sirius7]

@allhearts

Same here. Enabled "Anchor Ads" and "Side Rail Ads". Need to try something.

[Sissi]

Put all options „on“ and hope September is better with or without AI

[allhearts]

Question, been reading about Google SGE here in the forum, but don't know much about it.

Is this something you can enable or disable on your adsense account (per site) or does it just apply to each user's chrome settings?

Thanks in advance.

[Sissi]

Whatever happens Googgle emperium needs Adsense and Adsense needs publishers

[allhearts]

Today, RPM and CTR are the lowest I have ever seen, what is going on? Just when you think it can't get any worse... :-(

[MMedi26]

Compared to last Friday, things are starting off pretty low today.

[ember]

Lots and lots of download and continue ads, which explains the low epc. I wonder where all the decent advertisers have gone.

[MMedi26]

Very low RPMs

[Senechal]

Good lord, some of these complaints. I'm serving mostly US / Can / UK traffic and getting $0.60 RPM on an actively updated site, serving millions of pageviews a month with all original content, started in 2008.

$2 RPM would be a dream.

Be thankful if you're pulling that off in 2023.

[Senechal]

To those enabling anchor ads: A worthwhile test is also to disable "in content" Auto Ads and enable only "Overlay" ads.

The result will be that your Active View scores should shoot up to over 90% as nothing will serve below the fold. How this affects your revenue depends on your advertisers and CPM:CPC ratio, but it's worth a try. YMMV.

[gatormark]

You can tell by looking at the ad quality and filler ads that advertisers have disappeared for now. Hopefully, they start returning this and next week for me since school has started. However, it won’t hit full stride until mid September, when school starts for everyone..

[CommandDork]

There is hope sometimes: this past weekend was my best of the month - though still behind last year's August pace at this time.

But still, I'll take crumbs from the king's table.

[sirius7]

@Senechal

I'm only using "Anchor Ads" and "Side Rail Ads". Nothing else.

Active View Viewable is now around 95%.

Still low RPM of around 1,80$ and CPC around 0,20$

[gatormark]

Finally, up 3% over August of 2022.

[nikos90]

Last couple of days are performing good, RPM and CPC are in normal levels again.
Let's hope it will keep performing in that level, the summer months were really terrible.

[capulkit]

@nikos90 You seem to have started with adsense recently. From 2022 onward Adsense is in down road. This month so far 70% less than 2022 and 90% down than 2021.

[itek]

By far this has been the worst August ever. Google seems to be doing well, the stock is up 40%.

[DarkSide83]

Today is super bad. All time negative record.

[christianz]

Absolutely. The ad revenue of websites in 2023 is mind-bendingly low. Advertisers can get near-free advertising on quality sites with A-tier traffic, if they are smart enough to reach out to the site owners directly.

The only product/service/thing that is cheaper (much cheaper) in 2023 than 2021/2022 is display ads in websites. Truly special industry, apparently disconnected from broader economy.

[gatormark]

Advertisers can get near-free advertising on quality sites with A-tier traffic if they are smart enough to reach out to the site owners directly.

Site owners may be hurting themselves if they do this. If companies want to advertise directly with me, they will pay. Also, for guest posts with do-follow links, I charge $75 a post or $50 a post if I've worked with you previously. Guest posts must be unique articles, so I benefit from the fee and the unique content.

People always ask if I will take $20 or $30 for guest posts. I always say, "No!" I have my price, and I'm sticking to it.

[gatormark]

It looks like the ad quality is getting better. Good ad quality today!

[ember]

Advertisers can get near-free advertising on quality sites with A-tier traffic if they are smart enough to reach out to the site owners directly.

Not on my site. I've got quality traffic and charge advertisers for it accordingly. Google is the only one not paying enough for my traffic, and if they don't step it up pretty soon, then they won't be getting any more from me.

[loboblahz]

I think there are several parameters, especially during COVID, there was an explosion of Youtube videos on how to make money online. And people with the time to follow these videos and the motivation to find alternative income while they're locked up at home.
A multiplication of websites with Adsense (some already existing which have been forced to find sources of monetization and others which are built to generate income with Adsense and affiliation). It's not the only thing, but it's an important parameter. The more ad slots available to Google, the more the advertisers' budget is diluted. There are Youtube channels that specialize in how to make money with advertising on a site, a Facebook page, Youtube, etc.
There is more competition, I am of the opinion that in order to have a bigger share today and maintain our income, we must increase our advertising space. Not by overloading the sites, but by creating more content, exploring other niches for new sites.

AI-generated sites have been around for years, and the tools to do so have gotten simpler. Some automation regulars have created their tools to create a site with thousands of pages with: a list of products and photos, a list of keywords, and a button... the AI does the rest. Quality taking second place (for now).

All that to say that the market has evolved, the competition is tougher. And that blaming Google is not, in my opinion, what will bring our revenues back to the levels of previous years.

[christianz]

It's not competition. It's spam. It has no value. If you make a website "because you want to make money online", your website probably is trash.

The number of real, worthy websites is NOT increasing. It's decreasing.