AdSense Earnings and Observations - January 2026

[allhearts]

As 2025 comes to an end, I want to wish you all a Happy New Year.

This year hasn’t gone the way I’d hoped (especially with AdSense), and none of us know what 2026 will bring—but bring it on.

Wishing everyone the very best along with good health in the year ahead.

[edited by: not2easy at 11:42 am (utc) on Jan 2, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[rafraf]

Seems liike some internal problem with adsense (serving system?). I dont think it is counting problem because ads vanished too. Mine rpm halfed form very bad yesterday's rpm, so I think it started yesterday.

[levforever]

Same here, there must be some problem with the scanning by AdSense bots. Some pages are affected, others are not.

Could it be AI bots? On all the sites, I see fake users, particularly from Japan, India, China, Singapore, Iraq and Brazil.

[rafraf]

Nope, nothing abnormal in my traffic

[surfgatinho]

I'm in the UK and yesterday was the worst in years. All down to RPM tanking. It's less than half what it was 2 days ago - and it was bad enough then.

Looking at my reports it has been going down since mid November. I still think this has something to do with all those Chinese bots. I think maybe advertisers got burned with false views and are holding back while the issue is fixed.

But, I think the last couple of days is something else - hopefully.

[Pjman]

Yeah, worst I have ever seen on the RPM end. I am down 52% on RPM. Worst I have ever seen even with quality traffic.

I was psyched too because I finally got my traffic back to somewhat normal after a previous algo update. Can't influence RPM outside of cleaning out bots, I guess.

[DTP_Rodan]

Our page RPMs started crashing over the weekend. We had been pulling $30 - $35 page RPM, post-holidays. On Saturday we still pulled over $35 Page RPM, then $24 on Sunday, down from $30 the previous Sunday; $27 Monday, down from $33 the previous week; $20 Tuesday, down from $32 the previous week. So far this morning, $14 Page RPM, versus $32 last week. I checked the Ad Revenue Index on Ezoic.com, and it shows a clear decline in digital ad spend since the start of January, considerably lower than January '25, so far. However, that does not explain the sudden and precipitous Page RPM declines we're seeing, or that others are seeing, who have posted here. What would explain RPM declines is the fact that those paying for display ads on websites are not getting anywhere near the value they used to, due almost exclusively to Google hoarding all the traffic. The compact Google made with publishers was always a one-way street, a contract of adhesion, if you will: In other words, a take it or leave it deal. 2025 was their best year at Google. Publishers, who made 90% of Google's content possible, just had one of their worst.

[rafraf]

Still no update from google, they & publishers will lose milions of $ today.. and just silence. I'm sure it is delivery problem, even youtube has almost no ads when watching. It is impossible all advertisers withdraw at the same day. It is a big adsense tech fault probably, dont be fooled.

[allhearts]

Page RPM is at a whooping $0.68 the last 7 days, the norm was at around $10 for 20 years or so. I am crying all the way to the bank, oh wait, I no longer have anything to put in the bank.

[ember]

RPM started crashing on Monday and is non-existent today. Anchor ads have disappeared so must be some sort of serving glitch.

[DarkSide83]

Here also 40% down compared to the week before.

[CommandDork]

It wouldn't be Adsense without a crisis in January : /

Same here.

Based on what I'm seeing across my network, I can concur that something is 'off' with either ad spend or serving or both.

Seems to have started this past Monday-Tuesday. Traffic is 100% normal though.

RPM sitting at $0.92 from its usual $2.75+.

[azlinda]

Try 0.14 RPM where I am today. I am down 78% over the same period last year.

[DarkSide83]

We are not alone: [support.google.com...]

There seems to be a major issue at the moment.

[ember]

Remember when the red bar would appear at the top of your account when things weren't working? At least we knew that Google knew something was wrong.

[gatormark]

It’s been alluded to already, but one thing that we are failing to emphasize is the increasing social and economic turmoil in the world. You have the two super powers, China and the United States, going back-and-forth and businesses do not know how to reconcile this.

Also, the Christmas season did not go as many businesses had hoped, as a result they are not seeing the value of promoting their businesses via traditional means. Or, what they are spending is considerably less than they used to spend.

This, combined with the perfect storm of AI, creates an environment where we are the losers. It doesn’t matter in which country you reside, we are all being impacted.

I am an optimistic, glass have full, type of person, but I do not see any way out of this dilemma for website owners like us. I’ve said this before, I do believe that for certain types of websites there is no recovery and they will be wiped off the face of the Internet.

For other types of websites or communities, they will be able to limp along with meager ad revenue earnings.

I am currently focused on paid memberships and strategic guest posting. Together they are bringing in more money than Adsense.




2026 will be the death of many websites…

[DarkSide83]

"2026 will be the death of many websites…"

Same thing I was thinking about today, too. But then what will be used to train the AI? :-)

[Maleda]

There's definitely an issue... more reporting the same problems here: [reddit.com...]

[Maleda]

And another thread here... [support.google.com...]

[bgweb]

I’m in the UK, and I’ve never seen anything like the last few days. Genuine site traffic is up by about 50% compared with the same period last year, but the drop in revenue has been precipitous and is well below last year’s level on a day-by-day basis. Ironically, the first 10 days of January were the best start to a year since before COVID.

[C_Zalcman]

Same, there is a sharp within last 24h drop in RPM and reach for the most visited pages on all websites. Traffic >1M/m.
Yesterday Google released the new version of Chrome v144... last Saturday it was launched to 0.5%... and then the decline began.
Also today there was a major increase in the price of Bitcoin, where did the money go?

[C_Zalcman]

While many of us have huge drop in eranings,
today, January 14, 2026 Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)
shares hit a new 52-week high on Wednesday
Sets New 1-Year High! Do you have any questions? ;)

[ember]

2026 will be the death of many websites

One of my long-time competitors is already gone and another has a notice on his site that 2026 will be his last year due to AI overviews.

[barefoot]

Same issue here the last couple of days, looks like there's an problem with Google Ad Manager: [ads.google.com...]

"Google Ad Manager is experiencing systemic decline in Ad Exchange (AdX) match rates and delivery."

[mrDD]

Ads seem back. Still not a great RPM.

[DarkSide83]

For me the RPM is a little bit better compared to yesterday but not much. Still very low.

[rafraf]

adsense back, ad exchange still issues with fillrate

[enforces]

today better but not good.
1/4, maybe 1/3 standard RPM (yesterday 1/10 RPM).

[surfgatinho]

Almost back to where it was... which wasn't great!

At least it has made me review a few career options over the last couple of days.

[DarkSide83]

I‘m still 25% below last week which was already very low compared to last year.

[allhearts]

Over the last two years, my AdSense earnings have plummeted from an average of over $100 a day to less than 30 cents—a decline that simply no longer justifies the impact on site performance. After 20+ years, I’ve decided to remove AdSense entirely.

While my site will remain active as a labor of love, my focus is shifting toward maximizing user experience and Web Vitals. I’ll still be around the forums to participate in other discussions, but I’m officially retiring from the AdSense side of things. Good luck to everyone, and God bless.