AdSense Earnings and Observations - September 2023

[CommandDork]

Surprisingly August earnings matched July earnings to a tee in terms of revenue, and this on fewer impressions / sessions no less.

You really cant gauge what you're going to get month-to-month.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:49 pm (utc) on Sep 1, 2023]
[edit reason] new thread / cleanup [/edit]

[Sissi]

Noted not2easy

[gatormark]

It looks like AdSense is finally picking up a little bit in the USA. Revenue is up 12% over September of last year. That’s a good sign. Hopefully it continues.

[capulkit]

@gatormark
Good for you. Here still down 60% compared to last year.

[CommandDork]

Down 24% here. Labor Day weekend helped but things are leveling off now.

[allhearts]

Everything is tanking today, and so far I am down -38% from September of last year.

[Sissi]

Small increase indeed

[Dalnoon]

I'm getting a $0.41 CPC rate for my UK-traffic site (business niche), the rates have been quite stable for the past couple of months (between $0.37 to $0.45), what has dropped though, is the CTR (down to 7% from 10% in May/June), which translates to an overall drop in revenue.

I did a bit of digging, and seems like I'm getting less personalized ads (by filtering targeting type in Adsense report) and more placements, which is not a good sign honestly.

[allhearts]

I earn more from "Contextual" ads, per "Impression" then I do with "Personalized" ads, so the question is, should I consider disabling "Personalized" ads?

CTR, Active View Viewable and CPC also better with Contextual...

It makes sense to me to do so, but is it more complicated then that?

Thanks

[ember]

Placement ads are a pain. They always pay less and can't be disabled as far as I know. Personaized ads are also a pain and pay less. I've disabled them occasionally to see if I could just run contextual ads, which pay well, but when I disable personalized ads the RPM for the contextual ads drops so overall revenue stays about the same.

[allhearts]

Thank you @ember, I appreciate your feedback.

So is a good option just turning on Personalized ads and running auto ads alone without placement ads?

[Sissi]

Be careful
There is no standard receipt for all publishers
Test your sites individually and see what works
If G offers an option use it , this company nerver give an option to lose money.
I tick all the boxes and it has proven right.
Personalised ads are definitively best paying as they better targeted to achieve actions (purchase) from users

[allhearts]

@Sissi, thank you.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and just feel I should try something different.

[ember]

@allhearts, Sissi is right. What works for me might not work for you. Case in point, Sissi says his/her personalized ads are the best paying. For me, they lag well behind contextual. So it's worth trying new things. Sometimes they work, at least for a while. Just remember what you changed so you can undo the changes if needed.

[allhearts]

Yes, good points @ember

Thank you both for your feedback, much appreciated.

[magician]

One thing, I have noticed over the years is - almost all changes result in bad revenue from adsense before things become stable and real results starts to pour in. My suggestion is to not make too many changes too often... you won't be able to figure out what works and what not. For this reason, A/B testing on adsense is kinda difficult to trust.

[allhearts]

@magician, thank you.

I have decided not to make any changes for now, things are bad all around, not just for me, I have to be patient.

[Breathofair33]

So many frustrated im seeing some leak their earnings lol.
Not much improvement on any front. Ads dying business. YouTube non-skippable ads are now atrocious. YouTube TV becoming worse

[allhearts]

Is the dashboard numbers frozen for anyone for hours or is it just me having a horrible day? lol

[gatormark]

One of the issues I've found with personalized ads is that AdSense continues to show ads even after purchases are made or when you are no longer interested in the product (how would Adsense know). I have never turned it off, but I may test some of my theories out soon.

[gatormark]

@Breathofair33

I may be in the minority, but I do not mind non-skippable ads. Heck, ads are how we make our money! I'm in my late 50s, and for most of my life I have never been able to skip ads on TV or otherwise, so that's a big difference compared to the younger generation. Now, on my primary website, I give paying members the option to turn off all ads on my website.

[Conro]

Yesterday, I noticed that "Page Speed Insight" doesn't display AdSense banners for many English-language websites that don't use the cookie consent banner. Instead, there's just white space. Sometimes, after the test, desktop banners appear, but not mobile ones. If I repeat the test, all banners might show up, but with another test, they disappear again, leaving white space. When I personally visit the website, AdSense banners are visible, and the same happens when I test it with GTmetrix. Could someone please test this and, if necessary, report it to an AdSense employee? There might be a Google bug causing a drop in revenue.

[gatormark]

@conro

You might want to make a separate post so that your issue gets more traction.

[MMedi26]

I hear there was a new google update. We might see major changes within the next few weeks.

[Mentat]

September started promising, but now we have "Google September 2023 Helpful Content Update" and all is gone!

This update are created specifically to kill Adsense revenue.

[allhearts]

@Mentat

Yeah, was starting to look like it was going to be a better month, but all the sudden yesterday it took a turn for the worse and it's continuing that trend today.

[MMedi26]

@allhearts @Mentat I’ve noticed a drop too. Hopefully things pick back up again soon. I feel like update was very unnecessary.

[Breathofair33]

@gatormark I can understand the perspective given your age, (i'm a millennial full transparency) and the fact we have the power to block/prevent these today is a privilege. I agree with you. But there's so many free tools that you can block ALL ads YouTube/Twitch etc easily. I do not use these as a disclaimer.

[Breathofair33]

@MMedi26 the August 2023 one? Yeah, I'm noticing now google won't return how many indexed links ANY site has for some time. I was growing concerned. Haven't seen any messages yet in search console.

[MMedi26]

@breathifair33 there’s September one. Helpful content update.

[Sissi]

after a hopeful short period of increase now back to the low levels
And within this level G dare to proceed with real time clawback
It s not Adsense anymore it d called Subsense now