AdSense Earnings and Observations - December 2023

[allhearts]

Just a horrible day today, really, really bad.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:48 am (utc) on Dec 1, 2023]
[edit reason] split thread cleanup - New month, new thread [/edit]

[ember]

I’m up over 300%

What? That's not the theme of this thread ;)

[MMedi26]

@ember it literally says Adsense earnings….

[fearlessrick]

Replying to Senechal, from the November thread (sorry, I've been busy):

@fearlessrick Are you actively reaching out to advertisers in your niche? Or just posting rates on your site? I've got a 15 year old site doing millions of pv's and I can count the number of unsolicited direct ad inquires I've received on one hand.

I will be posting rates and reaching out to potential advertisers via email. I'm in a unique situation, retired, and don't actually need to make money (though it is nice to make some). Because of that, I'm willing to accept just about anything in exchange for ad space, like merchandise, gold, silver, any kind of barter, cash, collectibles, etc., or swap ad space like in the old days of the link exchange. I'm also open to paid placements, be they guest posts or advertorials.

The great thing about not being tethered to Google is that I don't have to worry about adult content, gambling, guns, or my political viewpoints and I don't have to abide by any of Google's terms, or those of the EU, or anybody else.

It's truly been a liberating experience so far. I have been busy developing a second site, which is a monthly men's magazine format. My target advertisers are a very broad spectrum, so I'm not really concerned.

Trading links, banners, ads, whatever is an early goal. My sites are not huge, but there's value in roughly 50,000 unique page views per month, which I have already seen grow in my small tests over the past month or so. Really, sky's the limit as to how far I can take this. I hadn't made the minimum threshold for payment ($100) for over a year, so I have little to lose by ditching our self-appointed Overlords at G.

I've been cleaning up my original site and developing the second, so it's not going to be an immediate change. I'll be back to this forum in the future with updates. Making $50 a month in trade, cash, whatever shouldn't be too hard, but I have much loftier goals now that I'm 70.

Honestly, I've been wary of Google's over-influence since 2005. I told everybody here and elsewhere that Google would take away people's autonomy and their voices. It's just like a dealer with his junkie. Once hooked, then they can dictate any terms they desire, which Google has done. It's been almost 20 years since I started with Adsense. It's been an OK ride, but the best years were in the beginning and now, it's just a joke. Centralization is a bad idea.

Good luck to everybody. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

[allhearts]

@MMedi26

I think ember is kidding around, since everyone is doing pretty bad and your doing so well.

[MMedi26]

@allhearts oh, I’m only doing well because I was doing very terrible last year. My high is probably still lower than y’all current low.

[itek]

I have come to the conclusion the only way you can make decent money with Adsense (under 50k page views per day) is blasting ads every 500px of website space. Setting vignette to unload ads every 1 minute via auto ads. Yes... It's an absolutely horrible user experience but turns a $3 RPM into $6-$8.

[ember]

@MMedi26, what allhearts said. Just a little joke. I'm glad you're doing well.

[allhearts]

You called it @gatormark,
just horrible today, I assume this will continue throughout the holidays and into next year.

[MMedi26]

@ember It’s all good. I was confused and had to read the forum description again lol.

[Breathofair33]

Getting caught up with Dec thread, nothing new with atrocious earnings for everyone including myself. GA4 recently introduced AdSense linking so now you can finally link your properties with AdSense and track earnings in GA4. I want to reply to Google and say "Track what earnings?"

[Soulofmonk]

Stats as of Dec 19th

Compared to last month[Nov 2023] to this date:
25% down
Compared to this month last year[Dec 2022] to this date:
49% down

YoY
16% down

After the HCU update, traffic, as well as earnings, started to decline. November's last week was good and gave me hope for Dec, but it has not been good. Traffic has still not recovered; on the contrary, it has steadily declined after G boosted Reddit and forums.

Except for August, all the months this year have performed below, especially December - the lowest month, even lower than January.

Niche: Gaming.

[MMedi26]

Seems like everything is down from google to sites like Facebook. My Facebook track is terrible at the moment. December hands down might be my worse month in a while.

[MMedi26]

Traffic*

[CommandDork]

The Xmas travel season in the U.S. starts today (Wednesday). My guess is traffic / earnings wont get "better" until mid-January at the earliest and, even then, the rollout of Per-Impression earnings will have an impact.

[allhearts]

@CommandDork

any deadline from google as far as when the full transition from CPC to CPM will be done?

[CommandDork]

From their blog post...

"We expect these updates to go into effect early next year..."

[blog.google...]

[allhearts]

So far this month, 60% of my traffic accounts for CPM, and only half of my earnings are from CPM, so with having a really bad CPC month to boot, I don't like where this is going, it does not look good folks.

[allhearts]

Impression RPM for CPM Bids for last two months (60% of traffic) $1.96

Impression RPM for CPM Bids for all of 2022 (15% of traffic) $2.95

This is not a small sample, we are talking millions of impressions.

[itek]

CPC down 48% from last week. I believe the nuclear Adsense winter has begun. My guess we see another 25% drop within a month and Google see all time new revenue highs.

[CommandDork]

I see similar numbers.

I can only suspect that the new change will still benefit Google and advertisers in the long run but us? Who knows.

It's certainly not sustainable for me by the current numbers forecast.

[ember]

I imagine a lot of publishers will be plastering their sites with even more ads once the CPM system starts. I find it interesting that advertisers will still be paying for clicks but we'll be paid for views.

[allhearts]

@ember,

It’s a no brainer that this move will benefit google, and as long as they have us to drive up their profits, there is no urgency on their part to make things fair for anyone. Google only cares about google and since they don’t have a major competitor, they make and break the rules as they go.

[ember]

@allhearts, that's always been the case. Just nobody cared much because back in the day a lot of us were making a lot of money.

[allhearts]

@ember,

true, but they never made a major change such as this, and this came as many medium to smaller sized publishers were already struggling, who probably account for 3 quarters or more of all adsense publishers.

[MMedi26]

Is there anyone this new change can actually benefit us a lot and we’re probably just overthinking? I’m trying to hope for the best tbh.

[Sissi]

More to come and closer to zero revenues
At this time until this week I used to see a low 2 digit revenues in Euros now it s a 2 digit in cents
We should accept that probably the half of the publishers will give up under this constellation
Happy new year !

[Sissi]

Adding that Adsense is the sole global product that hasn t been impacted by the global inflation

[MMedi26]

Day started off well but it seems to be falling now.

[CommandDork]

Same here. Off to the races at the beginning, now my horse is starting to trip.

[MMedi26]

Doing the same thing again today. Usually the day would get better as it goes and fall a little during the night. Kind of weird what’s going on at Adsense right now.