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]

[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.

[Pjman]

@allhearts - I'd recommend using a different Display ad company. There are some good ones out there that can work with you to 2-5x your display earnings without annoying users. It was the move that allowed me to quit my day job 15 years ago. I have 3 accounts with different companies they all are still, at the minimum 2xing Adsense earnings. I find it hard to beat the Adsense's Vignette units though, that's why I stay with Adsense a little.

@WebmasterWorld- RPM seems to be improving finally.

[bgweb]

One thing I’ve noticed in the last week or so is an increase in the number of header bidding ad agencies contacting me. I’m not sure whether that’s down to chance, an increase in site traffic, or the decline in AdSense revenue, which seems to be affecting at least some publishers in recent days. That said, I’ve been down the header bidding route twice before with perfectly reputable companies, and I found it a complete waste of time, so I’m reluctant to try again.

[DarkSide83]

@Pjman: can you recommend some companies? If you prefer, also private messaging would be great.

[azlinda]

@allhearts I am so sorry to hear that. I am way under $1 per day now. I will be next. Many of my pages aren't even showing AdSense ads anymore

[Pjman]

@DarkSide83 - On my last exit, I had to work for a display ad company for 2 years. They bought me. Learned a ton, mostly how lazy publishers are. If you depend on ad revenue to pay your bills and you are solely with Adsense, this is you.

The general playbook is MediaVine and Raptive (lesser so). You will most likely see at least a 2x lift with one of those firms (not on their discounted networks), if you work with them on placements. Some people are lazy and just say I want this placement here and that placement there, you will see limited lift that way. Tell them your goals (speed matters or it doesn't; I don't mind annoying users or I do) and then let them make recommendations. After you implement, just watch you engagement rate and pages/session to make sure it doesn't mess up your metrics. Give it a full 2 weeks and then take action. When the metrics don't change much at all, everything just keeps rolling.

If you have over 7 million page views monthly with a decent RPM (based on niche, just ask an LLM), get your own ad server. If you don't understand the tech, use a company like AdApex to manage it for you. The unmanaged side, you'll see a 20-25% lift. Managed would get you 10-15% lift.

[CommandDork]

Looks like things are on the mend in regards to the RPM/Ad Manager issue; set to eclipse yesterday's earnings by a considerable margin today (network-wide).

[azlinda]

Blocking Controls on the AS dashboard is blank? Is Google now not letting us block obnoxious URLs?

[bgweb]

@Pjman I've seen MediaVine work very well on long-form content. That aside, I've yet to see a significant uplift from any of the header bidding agencies. I invested a lot of time and effort working with two of the major ones and found it to be a complete waste. I'm only relating my experience, and you and others may have found otherwise. However, it isn't a panacea for everyone—far from it. In fact, it can feel more like a wild goose chase, with time better spent improving the website offering.

[Pjman]

@bgweb

I found that if you understand where placements add value and don't annoy your users and once you fully understand your users,testing placement locations will serious grow your RPM. You just have to have enough traffic so it is worth their while to work with you.

[allhearts]

Compared to other major ad networks, AdSense offers the lowest earnings for recipe sites. Since my site falls into that category, I suppose—given the current climate—it was only a matter of time before things went south.

[770change]

Okay I'm here with you too.
After 05/01 significant drop of
-Coverage
-RPM
-Personalized ads %%

Traffic US, most revenue we get is Personalized Ads (x5 from context).
We found some issues with US CMP, fixed, but it did not help.

Later we found some bots attack, after blocking with Cloudflare coverage, RPM went up, but still not december numbers.
Today we found that there is some Ghost-attack within Analytics, so no traffic goes through Cloudflare, they load analytics (and possibly Adsense ) only and do nothing (thus dropping RPM)

[DarkSide83]

You will never see nov/dec numbers in January. After the huge drop some days ago, it somewhat normalized but compared to last year it's still very low.

[allhearts]

Anyone seeing any improvement in RPM?

Because my site is in a certain bracket of traffic at this point, I am very limited to what else I can try, so I have made some adjustments and will see what happens for now with AdSense.

But I will have to wait at least a couple of weeks before I assess the damage.

[azlinda]

I am seeing no improvement. I have made some changes, which included getting rid of obnoxious top-of-page ads....dum de dum...the same old ugly crap ads that no one in their right mind would ever click on. At the moment I have two Google ads, and that includes the vignette. If things do not improve by the end of the month, I will remove AdSense entirely. At this point, I do not have much faith that things will improve.

[allhearts]

Sorry to hear that, @azlinda.

If it does get to that point for you and you have other options, it’s worth a shot.

I don't have those options right now; in 2025, my biggest traffic source was hacked and taken away.

My new domain did not gain any traction at all, and AdSense... well, we all know.

[DarkSide83]

One of my domains were stolen too. It took me 6 months to to get it back and everyone was involved: Police, ICANN, Lawyers, three registrars. It was crazy, but I got it back. Cost me five figures.

[allhearts]

@DarkSide83,

I'm happy to hear you got your site back. In my case, it was a Facebook group with 300,000 members, and it was hijacked on the same day my wife and I celebrated our 38th wedding anniversary last year.

The reason for the new domain was to target a better SEO keyword, start fresh with new features, and build DA from two older domains in the same niche. However, after about a year, that domain never gained any traction. This is a labor of love for me, but the extra income certainly helped at the end of the month.



.

[Mentat]

The new update, started on 21.01.2026 has finally killed my traffic and RPM.

It is so low on all figures, that it does not pay for the servers.
I have 15 employees that I will have to fire next month and after 25 years I will shutdown my sites.

It was nice, it was fun.
I made a lot of money but this feels like the end of the road guys....
I knew this day will come.

The ad publishing model is dead/deprecated and we are clinging to a dying business model.

[allhearts]

@Mentat,

Sorry to hear that, that sucks.

[azlinda]

@Mentat I know that hurts. I am so sorry this happened to you. I know it's no consolation to you that you have a lot of company.

[Soulofmonk]

Ad RPM is still way down compared to last year: - 52%. Anyone seeing improvements?

[gronetwork]

@Soulofmonk

No improvement. I often see comments saying that we have to block bad ads (cheap ads with AI pictures, topics not related to your niche, ads you wouldn't personally click on) (AdSense > Brand Safety > Content > Blocking Controls > Advertiser URLs). And then better Ads will appear. I am trying that. If nothing happens, I will replace Adsense by AMZ / AliExpress, as there is no real alternative to Adsense. If I can't increase the revenue, I will put an end to my 15 years old website and I will create a service website.

[ember]

@gronetwork, I usually let everything run, but I've been blocking tons of sleazy ads the last few days, which has surfaced more contextual ads. Could just be a coincidence, but ads looks better and RPM is up. Not way up but up.

[DarkSide83]

I think it’s one of the main task for Google to identify the best ads. It is not only the quality of an advertisement but also the amount they are willing to pay. I would not interfere with the logic from Google. But that’s only my opinion.

[bgweb]

I'm hearing about genuinely big hitters (in online publishing rather than retailing) being 60% down on 12 months ago. It's obviously varying according to the vertical. Nonetheless, I think @Mentat is probably right.

[gatormark]

@bgweb

I am down 65% from last year at the same time. I am still able to pay for my servers and make a little bit of money, but I started working a job three months ago because there is not enough website revenue to support me.

[azlinda]

My site is down -83% over the same period last year. Almost time to close up shop! AI has become the new "god."

[nordland]

I am up 40% compared to last year during the same period, despite Google's traffic collapsing by 80% on one of my websites. I adapted early and differentiated my traffic, partly from Pinterest but also, for example, ChatGpt. I haven't worked so much with my websites but more on TikTok, Youtube, etc to spread my "brand". I hope I qualify soon so I can make money on ads from Youtube. Every video I post ranks extremely quickly in Youtube search, then in Google search, so I have over 80% of my traffic from these sources.

[not2easy]

There was an announcement here last October that AdSense would be removing

“Brand Safety > Blocking controls” settings

and switching to

new “Authorized Buyers” control

[webmasterworld.com...]

It looks like that is affecting some folks.

[azlinda]

I'm convinced that Google is slowly showing fewer and fewer ads on sites that they no longer want in their program. For example, a person I know who had AdSense on her site no longer has any ads showing from AdSense. The impressions on my sites are down to a trickle from what they used to be.

My question is, if we delete our AdSense account, will we be paid for the remaining balance if it is under $100?

[allhearts]

@azlinda

I don’t think so, but I ain’t 100% sure. But like you I would like to find out so I can cash out and move on.

[azlinda]

I sent some feedback to Google AdSense and asked my question. IF I ever heard back from them, I will let you know what they say.

[Bobb11]

Hi,

do you have today low CPC and RPM? I think as a 14th January this month, we will see same CPC and RPM. Problem is with some Google Ad Manager - but dont know if this have something with adsense? [ads.google.com...]

Thank you

[DarkSide83]

It’s pretty low but not that low. Pretty much the same as the days before.

[Juniya]

@Bobb11, let's hope that the issue with the low CPC/RPM is due to that bug that is affecting, and I quote "majority of users". But what a f'd up way to start 2026...When was the last time we heard some good news for publishers? It's been years if not decades, smh.

[Soulofmonk]

Worst January ever.

[System]

February thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 11:58 am (utc) on Feb 11, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]