AdSense Earnings and Observations - March 2026

[CommandDork]

Ya, the Adsense CMP has been my one and only CMP for years. It does what it does.

[edited by: not2easy at 1:08 am (utc) on Mar 3, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]

[allhearts]

Back with Adsense, I notice RPM is still very low.

Anyone seeing any small improvements or the same as in February?

[azlinda]

@allhearts I took AS off for a few days then put it back on. It's even worse than February! (for me at least)

[allhearts]

@azlinda,

it's not just for you, much worst for me since I came back, then it was when I left over a month ago.

[allhearts]

Anyone else going through an awful March so far?

Numbers have gotten really bad for me.

Also, is everyone aware of:

As of March 1, 2026, Google has mandated a major update to AdSense consent messages, requiring all publishers to transition to the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) v2.3. This update is essential for compliance with European data regulations (GDPR) when serving ads to users in the European Economic Area (EEA) and the UK.

[DarkSide83]

Low numbers here but nothing too crazy.

[TheEnigma]

I’ve actually decided to check AdSense less. Over the years, wakening up and seeing how much I earned the previous day has become a bad habit. It affects my mood too much, so after a disappointing February, I haven’t checked AdSense at all this month. I’ll see if I can hold out until the end of the month—maybe then it will be just one day of disappointment instead of many. :)

In the meantime, I will focus my energy on maintaining and trying to improve the site!

[DarkSide83]

@TheEnigma: Same here.

Thankfully, I‘ve now multiple sources of income, so I try not to check every day.

[surfgatinho]

I expected my adsense income to be a managed decline over a few years. What I'm seeing is it just going off a cliff with numbers down around 40% YoY.

Would be nice if there was any comment / explanation from Google, but not a squeak...

[ember]

I made a good living from Adsense for 20+ years. Now it pays for lunch once in a while. Luckily, I am near retirement age and have other sources of income. That timing worked out pretty well, actually. And I am working on a new business, one with no ads in sight.

[dolcevita]

I was really down in December, January, and February. Honestly, it was a disaster. When your earnings drop by 50% overnight, it just kills your motivation and you don’t feel like doing anything at all.

In February, I finally decided to get back to work and start fixing things, adapting everything to today’s SEO, GEO, and AEO requirements. The first results are already visible in March. It’s still not at the level I had in October or November last year and definitely nowhere near what it was a year or two ago but the small, steady progress I’m seeing now gives me hope that it’s worth fighting for.

CPC is still only about half of what it used to be, around $0.05, but everything I’ve done over the past few weeks makes me feel like this could be the start of a new chapter. I’m optimistic again.

The most important thing is to stay motivated and keep improving. I truly believe better results are on the way.

Good luck to everyone.

[allhearts]

I think it was in last month’s thread that @ember mentioned how disabling user-based ads initially turned things around for her before leveling off.

A few days ago, I decided to test it out myself since I don’t have much to lose right now, and the results over the last three days have been steadily improving.

I’m not sure if this trend will last, but my RPM, clicks, CTR, and total earnings are all up.

[dolcevita]

RPM is consistently between $0.50 and $0.90 (a year ago it was between $5.00 and $10.00, which now honestly feels almost tragicomic). That’s obviously terrible.

CTR is between 1.50% and 2.00%, while CPC is around $0.05.

Impressions are xxx times higher, mostly because of AI and bot traffic, and that’s despite having a very strict rule set through Cloudflare. Basically everything has to pass an Interactive Challenge, except verified search engine bots (I blocked the Chinese ones) and some AI crawlers that might actually be useful for website visibility.

Despite all that, the RPM remains very low.

We’ll see how things develop over the next few months, but my motivation and fighting spirit are back, and that's what matters most :)

[londrum]

Has anyone tried to block Google's domains from showing ads? I'm always seeing their ads for Chrome and Gemini and I'd like to nuke the whole lot but I'm worried that google might hold it against you

[allhearts]

Although an increase did happen when I disabled user based ads, things are still pretty darn bad.

Just curious if anyone has tried Journey by MediaVine?

[Maleda]

Reporting seems to be stuck this morning... anyone else?

[System]

New month, new thread here: [webmasterworld.com...]

[edited by: not2easy at 12:12 am (utc) on Apr 3, 2026]
[edit reason] New month, new thread [/edit]