AdSense Earnings and Observations - February 2024

[allhearts]

Thank god January is over with, just horrible.

What does February hold? We will soon see.

[edited by: not2easy at 5:39 am (utc) on Feb 1, 2024]
[edit reason] New month [/edit]

[MMedi26]

Off topic but on top of Adsense being so wishy washy this month, I’m also dealing with huge issues at Facebook. I’ve been tons of money with bonuses and reels just to get with hit verification requirements and they’re barely responding. Just a huge mess of a month.

[allhearts]

Every month since mid 2023 gets worst (lower earnings), honestly don't know what is going on or what to do anymore.

[Aman]

They have completely switched from CPC to CPM which is getting worse. I hope we can at least get high CPM bids.

[MMedi26]

Hoping the second half of the year is the complete opposite of how it started. Feeling very attacked.

[Sissi]

RPM down today , half of Friday

[Senechal]

I'm now 96% CPM bids and revenue has plunged accordingly as many of us here predicted would happen.

It seems Google's announcement about "moving to paying publishers by impression" (a.k.a "going CPM") last November didn't age well.

Remember when they said: "Based on our tests, we don’t expect publishers to see a change in their earnings as a result of these updates."?

(It's here for anyone who wants to savor the wrongness of the prediction: [blog.google...] )

Yeah... well... here we are and earnings have collapsed.

It never made any sense anyway. Looking back at year after year of historic AdSense data, it was always obvious that CPM always paid far less than CPC — even when it took up a majority of overall bids.

So as anyone could have predicted, take away the CPC and the majority of earnings would simply vanish — unless Google was to raise CPM rates dramatically. Which they didn't. And earnings did vanish, as expected.

[not2easy]

The same November information is available here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[MMedi26]

My RPM plummeted when CPM became majority. When it was still 50/50, I would reach $7 RPM’s. Ever since the change, my RPM is struggling to hit $5.

[allhearts]

Yup, everything is getting worse each day here as well.

[MMedi26]

They need to get rid of CPM being majority and bring CPC back.

[Sissi]

Last 7 days Europe is up 2 digiit % but USA is down also 2 digit % for a mixed portfolio
France Germany on the top

[Senechal]

@NMedi26 It will never happen. The reason (so I've been told) is the legal changes in third-party cookie laws make click-fraud too hard to detect.

As a result of the laws, Google can't track clicks reliably anymore. So it's all CPM from here on out.

[MMedi26]

@Senechal Well looks like the end of Adsense is near.

[MMedi26]

195 clicks, .13 cpc, $5 RPM and 5k views. I ended the night with $25 lol.

[MMedi26]

The CPC to CPM is hurting me badly because a few months ago 195 clicks would be way more than $25.

[Sissi]

@mmedi26
What s the contribution of Facebook to your traffic?

[allhearts]

@Sissi,

mine is 3 to 1, even though it has declined in recent weeks.

[Senechal]

@Mmedi26

Yeah me too. Clicks are no longer a contributor to earnings.

I'm still trying to walk through the data and get an understanding of the new bid model. One interesting observation: I have one somewhat unusual site which does 6.5 pages per session, because the site involves long, multi-page sequences where users are unlikely to "click out" and exit the sequence.

So my CTR was always low on that site, but my pageviews were always high.

One would think that that site *should* be a perfect scenario for CPM bids. ie: Clicks no longer matter, just views.... So on a site with a high PPV that's good, right?

But surprise, it isn't working out that way. My revenue on that high PPV site has collapsed by 30-40% since everything shifted to CPM — and there hasn't been any change in traffic.

So a site with high pageviews and low clicks is doing *worse* after switching to CPM. Go figure.

Hmm...

[MMedi26]

It’s funny because I have a $13 rpm right now to start off Tuesday but I know it’ll drop and I’ll be confused how that even happened and the revenue will not even add up to those high RPM’s anymore. I literally have $2 right with the Rpm going from $16 to $13. @Sisi my Facebook traffic makes up majority tbh and it always worked out perfectly until the switch. I’m trying to have a little hope that it’ll get better. February 2023 was worse than what I’m pulling now. I’m actually up in %. @senechal clicks not being a huge factor anymore is actually so disappointing. It takes away from the point of serving ads on sites in a way.

[MMedi26]

Another thing I just noticed. My CPC is actually doing better now that they’re serving more CPM. Interesting. 4 clicks so far for CPC and the RPM says $45.
11 clicks for CPM and the RPM says $1 lol.

[MMedi26]

46 CPC impressions and 700 CPM impressions. They’re butchering the system to pay us less that’s all.

[CommandDork]

I'm seeing higher RPM, CPC, and CTR than I have over the last five years with the new CPM approach in place. In the old days, this would have resulted in AMAZING revenue,

As it stands in Feb 2024 with CPM in full swing, I'm down 40% from last year : /

[MMedi26]

@commanddork same! I started the day with $16 RPM, it dropped to $7 but I’ve only made $8. I think what Adsense recently did to their system is a bigger issue that should be broadcasted in the news more.

[MMedi26]

Impression RPM for CPM is drastically lower than the RPM for CPC.

[MMedi26]

Do you guys have any idea why it says my site isn’t getting any hits in google analytics G4?

[Sissi]

Test one day without Facebook traffic and you will figure out
Adsense doesn t like it

[MMedi26]

@Sissi I think CPM doesn’t like it. It worked fine with CPC.

[MMedi26]

I’m so lost of words on what’s happening right now. Not only with Adsense but my Facebook. Really unfortunate. These things will make you go into a quick depression.

[Sissi]

Don t give up tomorrow is another day and try another sector

[MMedi26]

@Sissi Thank you, I’m trying not to panic.