AdSense Earnings and Observations - September 2025

[gatormark]

Fewer and fewer quality ads, or ads in general, are displaying on the desktop version of my websites. The ads on mobile devices seem plentiful and overwhelming.

[CommandDork]

For the first time in a long time, summer was actually quite explosive for me:

+30% ahead of last year's August and a colleague reported +80% from last year.

So there's still *some* money to be made out there but both Google and audiences are very particular on how - and what - they look for these days. A.I. doesnt help things but it is what is is.

I expect another down autumn/winter though - the Xmas season hasn't been good to me in over a decade but, this time, the summer revenue will help carry me through.

[allhearts]

Summer has been pretty abysmal for me, specially since I lost my #1 traffic source. Low page views/impressions and RPM is the new norm for me right now. It’s so bad that it will take 2 to 3 months to reach the Adsense payout threshold of $100.

[tangor]

Give it time. Things will change. Probably for the marginally better in a few more months as tariffs etc settle into something "known" and "comfortable". Spend is off at this time. When folks feel like they can plan ahead once again things will improve.

Merely history repeating itself from Ugh the Cave Man to Today the Webmaster...

[makintocheplus]

My RPM on my french site in first days of September is $3-4...

Quality of Ads is down..

[azlinda]

@allhearts. Made minimum in July, then Google decided to claw back 12 cents leaving me at something like 99.96, so I had to wait until July to get paid. This was the first time in a long time that google had clawed back more than 1 or 2 cents.

[tangor]

Using your money for another month. If payments can be cut down to 6/yr g's operating capital will remain strong.

</conspiracy-theory>

[allhearts]

@azlinda,

sorry to hear that. I myself wish I could at least get to $100 a month now.

[CommandDork]

Now that I've whiffed on the massive Powerball jackpot last night, time to get back to work : /

[tangor]

Now that I've whiffed on the massive Powerball jackpot ...

Every day on the web is a shot at sudden fortune. Probably better odds than Powerball! The only way to win is to play the game.

[gatormark]

This week has been the craziest week I have ever experienced. Usually, this time of year, my traffic and revenue increase. This year, the opposite is happening. While traffic has increased slightly, AdSense revenue is plummeting day by day. I don't even know what or why. I don't think I'll survive until the end of the year...heck, end of this month.

[loboblahz]

@gatormark : Same here. Higher Traffic, Adsense revenue divided by 2.

[UpOnOne]

Same here. Page RPM down 40% the last few days.

[allhearts]

Page RPM well down for me as well.

[londrum]

I turned on cloudflare the other day and now that i've accumulated a few days of stats I can see that the difference to adsense's stats is wild.
according to cloudflare the number of unique visitors I get is six times higher than the number of page views adsense records for an entire day.

I know that most of our traffic is supposed to be bots, but even so, given an average page view count of two, the adsense page views should be 12x higher and impressions should be 24x higher.

that shows you how many clicks they must discount for whatever reason

[Brett_Tabke]

.02 they are weeding down AdSense because they want to push higher paying traffic to their other double click networks and Adwords. imho

[azlinda]

RPM fell through the floor this morning. It had been doing quite well for a couple weeks.

[allhearts]

@azlinda,

sorry to hear that, I thought it was just for me.

What a horrible year. :-(

[azlinda]

@allhearts It seems that we are not all on the same Google bottom-of-the-barrel-page at the same time. We take turns!

[allhearts]

@azlinda,

I wish I could just blame RPM, but my biggest downfall was losing 90% of my traffic as that traffic source was hacked, but yes, RPM has just added to it.

[allhearts]

Has everyone's RPM completely tank as well?

I have never seen it this bad for me, ever.

[azlinda]

Woke up this morning to RPM lower than a bullfrog's belly.

[ClassAction]

AI CAUSING TRAFFIC AND FALSE AD CLICKS?

I recently received an email from GGL stating the following:

Ad serving limit placed on your AdSense account

We recently identified invalid traffic concerns in your AdSense account. As a result, we have introduced an ad serving limit on your account. We will automatically review and update this limit as we continue to monitor your traffic.

We found potentially invalid traffic being used to generate ad revenue on your account. As a reminder, invalid traffic is strictly prohibited by the AdSense Program policies. Clicks on Google ads must result from genuine user interest. Publishers may not ask others to click their ads. This includes asking users to support your site, offering rewards to users for viewing ads, and promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior. Additionally, clicking your own ads, automated clicking tools or traffic sources, robots, or other deceptive software are also prohibited.


NOTE:
I have not changed anything on my website that has been up for over 18years.

[edited by: not2easy at 6:24 pm (utc) on Sep 23, 2025]
[edit reason] OT moved to correct forum [/edit]

[not2easy]

Hello ClassAction and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

Others have noticed a similar "Invalid Traffic" notice and without any changes, it just went away in a few days. I would be surprised if your situation is different. It can be immensely aggravating, but seems to vanish on its own.

There are a few known situations that can cause this to happen, like running FaceBook ads for traffic. An older discussion on that: [webmasterworld.com...]

Some have had Auto Ads cause the invalid traffic issue too. If you suspect it is AI bots, try CloudFlare to cut back on that, even their free version can help.

[ClassAction]

Thanks not2easy
I have not advertised, but Yes - I do have Auto Ads activated - as per GGLs advice. Recently I have blocked Several ads in Ad Review that could cause too many clicks, such as Free PDF, Download Now, etc. and this can be a problem because I offer a downloadable book. So I continue to block these types of ads. I recently deactivated Auto Ads, but reactivated it - and will make several adjustments to ad placements and frequency.

[gatormark]

My page RPM is steadily decreasing, while non-bot page views are inching upwards. What a weird world.

[rafraf]

Mine rpm is steadily rising throgh september as the q3 ends

[UpOnOne]

I'm down another 40%

[ruip]

Ahhhh... it's not just me... I was already thinking that I would be, perhaps, a rare case. It seems like the end of an ERA... reduced to a little more then half in 6 months... 18 years in adsense... since July I've been waiting for the broken Google rollback .. seems they took out the "don't be devil" from protocols, from the search, and from... I really don't understand what they intend with this... losing users who are already starting to look for alternatives? Let's wait and see

[CommandDork]

My RPM is down but I know it to be my "End-of-Summer Blues".

Now comes the dark winter...