AdSense Earnings and Observations - January 2024

[CommandDork]

As expected, low-and-slow to start 2024.

[edited by: not2easy at 3:11 pm (utc) on Jan 1, 2024]
[edit reason] New Year, New Thread [/edit]

[MMedi26]

Facebook traffic randomly increased again today. Now for the month I’m up over 100% right now compared to last January.

[Soulofmonk]

We are down by 50% compared to last year

[Senechal]

@SoulofMonk Same here. The traffic losses from these ridiculous algo updates are bad enough, but RPM is down significantly too.

And we're still seeing CPC earnings. So what happens when Google goes full CPM?

[londrum]

Im going to see how it goes after they switch over to CPM, but im not expecting it to be better. Im getting ready to dump adsense and just have affiliate image ads. And i can get rid of that big GDPR pop-up as well, which is a bonus

[SweetPotato]

Page RPM is through the floor.
OMG!

[Sissi]

I became too supertitious to say this day is the because I know the devil ( G) will punish me 😄
Yes I confirm Mmedi26

[MMedi26]

My RPM isn’t the best but what’s keeping me afloat right now is the random increase of Facebook traffic. It still sucks though because with this type of traffic, I would be getting way more revenue if Adsense numbers were actually great right now. Hoping this traffic returns later this year when Adsense numbers are back up.

[MMedi26]

What day are they switching to CPM? I thought it started. I have an increase of CPM but my majority is still CPC it looks like.

[ember]

I don't think they've announced an actual date for the CPM switch, just sometime early this year. The third-party cookie phase-out is supposed to start in the third quarter of this year.

[MMedi26]

@ember kind of weird that they didn’t announce a date. Maybe they’ll change their mind after seeing everyone dislike for it.

[Senechal]

Google hasn't given a specific date for the switch to CPM-only.

As far as I know, they just said it will happen during the "first quarter".

It's not clear if that means they'll roll it out for everyone on some random date during the 1st quarter — or if they'll start rolling it out on a site-by-site basis, or by geo, as the 1st quarter progresses.

In the meantime — for anyone who doesn't know — you can look in your AdSense Reports at the "Bid Types" report for your percentage of CPC and CPM.

For the past 7 days I'm at:

* CPC bids: 72.4% of revenue
* CPM bids: 25.9% of revenue
* Active View CPM: 1.6% of revenue

Here's what worries me:

For my site at least (which serves millions of pv's per month to a mostly US readership), CPC pays much better per impression than CPM. While my CPC bids make up 72.4% of REVENUE, they make up just 43% of my total IMPRESSIONS.

In other words, my CPC bids which take up a minority of my total impressions are yielding a hell of a lot more revenue than CPM bids, which take up the majority of my total impressions.


So ... here's the terrifying part: When I do the math ... if all my current bids were to switch to CPM, at the current CPM rates, my revenue would drop to just 47% of where it is now — which is already the lowest it's been in years.

Are my CPM rates just unusually low relative to CPC? Or does this broadly match everyone else's CPM & CPC earnings ratio on a per impression basis?

[SweetPotato]

When there's only cpm, cpm bids will go up.
So it's too early to tell.
If Google does this they calculated they (not us) will earn more.

[CommandDork]

Agreed. Until we know what CPM bids are going for (if they change at all), we dont really have much to speculate on.

Otherwise, ya, lots of sites will be in the pooper by April-May.

[Senechal]

@SweetPotato - That's true, but it's only true as far as contextual factorsgo. When there are no cookies, automotive, mobile phone reviews, beauty magazines, travel, etc. will do well.

OTOH, loads of general interest and informational sites will do a cliff-dive.

[CybrKev85]

New here but not to Adsense 12 years experience. (seen it all good, bad and the downright ugly)

Feel like Google Adsense is on the verge of getting downright ugly as it transitions to the new payout model.

Really digging into the payout model letter Dan Taylor Vice President, Google Global Ads released is cause for concern. Im expecting a 30-40% decrease in earnings when the roll out happens. This on top of another dismal year could be a recipe for me tapping into another revenue sources other than Google Adsense. Really the only one that will benefit from this change is Google.

I own multiple high CTR websites often seeing 3-5% CTR. I use Google Auto Ads aggressively, since thats what it appears the company wants us to do. My CPC bid types are usually anywhere from 40-75% higher than my CPM bid types. So if the rates do not go higher I expect a real issue on horizon.

The end result will ultimately be more ads on the website to recoup loses. If I am getting paid per impression I am getting rid of vignette ads, sticky ads, search ads basically keeping only in content ads and doubling those ads on each page.

[Swanny007]

Things are dismal, things have been going downhill for years.

I am also thinking if I get paid by views I'm losing the annoying ads like vignette, etc. The strategy appears to be more ads = more money. Which is unfortunate for the visitors.

[MMedi26]

After the terrible few day start of the year, I’m now surprisingly up 350% compared to January 2023 thanks to an increase in FB traffic. Still hoping my RPM, CTR etc will rise soon.

[gatormark]

Down 2%…weird month so far. Last two days were higher than normal for a January Friday and Saturday. I hope that bodes well for the rest of the month. We’ll see next week.

[MMedi26]

Starting to see CPM bids rise and it’s not looking good.

[SweetPotato]

Check your RPM report for last 3 years. I'm at the lowest of all times at measly 0.12!

For perspective on Nov 2021 RPM was 0.79
On march 2021 it was all time high at 1.07!

Page views have doubled since but it i earn less cos RPM plummeted.

Around Oct 9 2022 there was a massive decline of ad impressions even though page views increased (!).
Are they not fulfilling them? Do they not have enough advertisers? I see a lot of empty spots on refresh.

[allhearts]

@SweetPotato,

"Are they not fulfilling them? Do they not have enough advertisers? I see a lot of empty spots on refresh."

same here.

[allhearts]

@MMedi26,

I don't think there is a specific day when Adsense will just switch from CPC to CPM.

As someone said before, I think it will be done gradually (over time), as CPC will continue to decrease and CPM will increase.

[MMedi26]

A bad Sunday. Low RPM.

[Soulofmonk]

RPM so far[first week of Jan]
2024: 2.83 USD
2023: 4.11 USD
2022: 5.65 USD
2021: 4.88 USD
2020: 5.05 USD

This year, the site's traffic is also low; it's a very depressing situation, to be honest.

[MMedi26]

@soulofmonk tragic! Even though I’m doing better than last January, I still see the decline that’s happening. My traffic was very low January 2023 so that’s the reason the numbers weren’t good back then. I have pretty decent traffic this year and can see that the numbers arent adding up compared to previous months because of the recent changes + the New Year.

[MMedi26]

I’m interested what made the Facebook traffic randomly go up this weekend. It seems to be dropping again today but I don’t think nothing major was done at Facebook recently. The app doesn’t even have an update and it’s been two weeks which makes me wonder is the staff still on Holiday vacarion and returns tomorrow? Let’s hope this is the case for Adsense too and things will change for the better starting this week.

[MMedi26]

I know many schools will resume this week as well.

[gatormark]

@MMedi26

That is what I am waiting for. 40% of my traffic comes from schools or those who are in school.

[gatormark]

Has anyone seen an uptick over the past few days? I have gone from down 2% to up 5% over January 2023 in 3 days. Strangely, my page views are down, but my page RPM is up, and that's the difference. I have been working on the content of my main website for the past two weeks, and I wonder if that's the reason for the uptick or if it is something else. I am anxious to see what happens this week since school should be back in full swing. My traffic is down about 34% since school is out, so it would be nice if my revenue increased accordingly or even greater starting Monday. Here's to hoping things are getting better.

[MMedi26]

@gatormark Nope! My RPM is still down, waiting for it to return to normal. My traffic is up from social though and the revenue for the amount of views I’m getting is pretty terrible. I am up over 300% from last January though so I guess I should be the last one here complaining lol.