Google Adsense Google Adsense Earning Declining Significantly

[web3]

Hi,

Has anyone else found over the last few years that Adsense earnings are declining pretty significantly?

For roughly the same levels of traffic I am earning a lot less than I was 2-3 years ago.

Is this my fault for not using the right ads / adapting, or increased use of Adblocking, general ad blindness, a change in how people use the web etc?

Anyone had any success with content based ads as a replacement, eg Taboola?

Cheers

 

[humble pie]

Yes and like you say nothing has really changed my end, if anything the sites are better than when first started started.

Hi,

Has anyone else found over the last few years that Adsense earnings are declining pretty significantly?

For roughly the same levels of traffic I am earning a lot less than I was 2-3 years ago.

Is this my fault for not using the right ads / adapting, or increased use of Adblocking, general ad blindness, a change in how people use the web etc?

Anyone had any success with content based ads as a replacement, eg Taboola?

Cheers

 

[acceleratoraccelerator is verified member.]

Banner blindness may be to blame. I like to put AdSense within the page text rather than at page edges.

 

[MurrayMurray is verified member.]

What % of your traffic has gone from browser to mobile or tablet?

 

[Adam HAdam H is verified member.]

Banner blindness generally only becomes a problem if you have continuous returning visitors, for example a forum of which members visit daily would suffer from banner blindness which is why you see adverts being moved slightly every couple of months or colours changed to bring that distraction back into play.

In the broader spectrum adverts if anything have become more accepted as apart of the furniture, that in its self maybe seen as a banner blindness but again only in certain situations/scenarios .

Whats more to blame ( but not the sole point ) is the fact Google has become increasing good at reducing junk , fraudulent traffic and clicks to its ads, its changed the entire structure of how ads are shown to people on a massive scale, for example showing people adverts of a large percentage based on their previous visits and search trends rather than being based on the content of which the site they are visiting at that moment.

Then you have smart pricing for the lower quality of site, lower quality of traffic and visitors.

With all that said, in some niches you still get hit hard. 5 years ago i had a couple of sites in totally different niches, both generating 4 figure sums on a monthly basis..............over a 12 month period you could physically see the decline of revenue to eventually around 50% , even though the sites were better than ever...we kept up with standards, traffic from core premium advertising lands such as US,UK, GER etc were rising at a significant rate................................yet still a 50% cut within 12 - 18 months.

So much so it was actually more beneficial to sell direct adverts even with the extra leg work of adding ads and contacting potential advertisers.

Not to mention the conspiracy theory's of Google Wacking publishers that get close to the Golden numbers doom. Im sure you all saw the Leak which was "supposedly" pretty accurate from last year : http://pastebin.com/qh6Tta3h ............interesting reading whether its true or not.

 

[martin-s]

Have you tried to reduce low CPC ads, in terms of blocking advertisers and specific adverts? That would help try and focus on the higher value ones.

But it's a bit of a hassle.

 

[Lucky Luke]

Adam

Your link may be interesting reading but I'll never know as it's been removed.

:-?

 

[Adam HAdam H is verified member.]

Adam

Your link may be interesting reading but I'll never know as it's been removed.

:-?

Sorry the forum changed the URL with my dots following it, ive corrected the BBcode for you

 

[Lucky Luke]

Hi Adam

Thanks for the fresh link... it sounds plausible, but surely someone else would have squealed as well by now?

 

[Adam HAdam H is verified member.]

You'd think so although with NDA's and what not, id imagine it would button up most of the sensible disgruntled ex-employees, Like i said its certainly believable....whether it has substance or not i guess we'll never really know for sure.

We all like to speculate and place blame on everything possible

 

[Retired_Member42]

I don't see how that can be true. What's the point in losing those $10k a month publishers just to save a month of commissions? Let them run for 2 months and they've already made you the same figure on a 50% payout. It's just bad business, there is no logic to it. It sounds like it's written by someone who has got banned himself.

 

[Adam HAdam H is verified member.]

I don't think its quite as simple as that, its not like they've got big one month, the thought of Google wrapping up some of a certain tier of publisher before they get too big to become a problem is plausible in my opinion.

Especially with some of the warnings that Google send out for some of the most trivial situations, in some cases instant bans rather than warning or request for action. I remember being banned a couple of years ago due to a "provocative" image of a woman who was fully clothed with a low cut top posted by a member on a forum. The only resolution they were happy with was for us to totally remove the off topic section from view of guests. ( which we were happy to do to get the adverts back online as quick as possible ). "who" you speak to at the other end of that account review has alot to do with how it plays out i believe.

You only have to do a couple of searches to find floods of high end publishers having their accounts blown up to read at least a little truth in that "leak".

 

[dazc]

Is this my fault for not using the right ads / adapting, or increased use of Adblocking, general ad blindness, a change in how people use the web etc?

A responsive site and responsive ad formats are a must. Have you done this?

Have you also experimented with just text ads?

I've always found the click through rates much higher despite google imploring me constantly to do otherwise.

 

[dazc]

I don't see how that can be true. What's the point in losing those $10k a month publishers just to save a month of commissions? Let them run for 2 months and they've already made you the same figure on a 50% payout. It's just bad business, there is no logic to it. It sounds like it's written by someone who has got banned himself.

Doesn't sound that plausible to me either. Interesting read nonetheless.

Discussion on hacker news with comments from google employees:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667976

 

[martin-s]

It doesn't make any sense. The more the publisher earns, the more Google earns.

 

[PoshTiger]

I've been messing around with different ways to monetize traffic domains and get 4p per click with Sedo, 8p with namedrive and around 40p with adsense.

Still the best at the moment for me

 

[web3]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for the replies, have been away but will reply to everyone individually shortly.

Cheers
Colin

 

[web3]

Doesn't sound that plausible to me either. Interesting read nonetheless.

Discussion on hacker news with comments from google employees:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7667976

A very interesting read, thanks for sharing that dazc.