Google Adsense Rise of mobile

[MurrayMurray is verified member.]

How are you guys finding the rise of mobile usage?

I have an example of a site

2014 mobile visitors were 36%

2016 it was 53% (about the same so far this year)

RPM desktop: £11-12

RPM mobile: £2-3

Obviously I find adsense perfectly fine for desktop visitors, but do you guys use anything different for mobile? is mobile just always crap in comparison?

 

[baldidiotbaldidiot is verified member.]

There are responsive ad units that work quite well: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/3213689?hl=en-GB

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

(From a site with about 350,000 uniques a year)

2014 mobile: 15%
2015 mobile: 20%
2016 mobile: 24%
2017 mobile: 26%

RPM desktop: £9
RPM mobile: £6

However, mobile users seem to look at about 30% more pages than desktop users do so actually the RPM are almost the same if you adjust for that.

 

[baldidiotbaldidiot is verified member.]

Just had a quick check of some recent stats. CTR for the responsive ads on mobile seems to be within 5% of the desktop stats for the same site (based on a couple of mil impressions).

And as Edwin just pointed out, we also see a lower RPM on mobile to desktop.

 

[MurrayMurray is verified member.]

There are responsive ad units that work quite well: https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/3213689?hl=en-GB

I changed to responsive ads a good while ago, but didn't seem to make too much of a difference hmm

(From a site with about 350,000 uniques a year)

2014 mobile: 15%
2015 mobile: 20%
2016 mobile: 24%
2017 mobile: 26%

RPM desktop: £9
RPM mobile: £6

However, mobile users seem to look at about 30% more pages than desktop users do so actually the RPM are almost the same if you adjust for that.

£6 seems very good

What kind of niche is it and where have you placed the ads? may I ask

 

[MurrayMurray is verified member.]

Just had a quick check of some recent stats. CTR for the responsive ads on mobile seems to be within 5% of the desktop stats for the same site (based on a couple of mil impressions).

And as Edwin just pointed out, we also see a lower RPM on mobile to desktop.

I have an advert under the menu, obviously much bigger on desktop but

Desktop: cpc: 31p ctr: 3.63%

Mobile: cpc: 19p ctr: 0.49%

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

Murray do you make good use of 336x280 or 300x250 and also link ads? On my sites where I have a very high mobile usage percentage (like 60% +) I will use a different ad mix to what I would on a desktop dominant ad. On mobile the 336x280 and 300x250 are I think better than the responsive equivalent so I may not use responsive on a mobile-dominant site.

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

Link ads can be surprisingly good if there's a history of them returning highly relevant links.

As for the CPM, it's about finding stuff that works for your layout and your audience. There's no one size fits all answer. I've lost count of how many experiments I've done over the last 13 years. (At the same time, I'm a rank amateur at testing because I'm rubbish at web design.)

One thing to consider: removing ads can sometimes make you more money. (It's impossible to know without testing.) And why? Because Google attempts to fill all the ad slots on a page. If there's one ad slot, it will automatically hold the highest paying ads Google can find. If there are 3, Google will try and optimise them by moving ads around so that the better ones are in the slot where people seem to click more, but you'll still have 2/3 of ads that are lower paying (by definition: you've got 3 lots of ads, not 1 lot of ads) so if the extra ad units end up spreading the clicks around, your overall CPM could actually drop.

I know people who make many times my CPM, and I know people who make less than £1 CPM and still make a great living from it (the topic's popular so the traffic is high, but it's not something that lends itself well to advertising).

Anyway, there are loads and loads and loads of articles out there about optimising Google ads in all sorts of ways. I won't even pretend to have the "right" answer. The only advice I will give is this: test, test, and test again. If something works, stop (for a while). But be prepared to start testing all over again as stuff changes (like the rise of tablets, and mobile).

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

Link ads can be surprisingly good if there's a history of them returning highly relevant links.

Yes, link ads will be the only way you can get content relevant links on some sites.

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

One more thing: you should only ever compare revenue per visitor. Revenue per page is useless for comparisons.

If your desktop visitors earn you £2.50 CPM per page and your mobile visitors earn you £1 CPM per page, then at first glance mobile might look pretty bad.

However, if desktop visitors view an average of 4 pages each, and mobile visitors view 10 pages each then...

1,000 desktop pageviews earned you £2.50.
1,000 mobile pageviews earned you £1.

But the 1,000 desktop pageviews came from 250 visitors. The 1,000 mobile pageviews came from 100 visitors.

That means you're earning £0.01 per visitor on the desktop. But you're also earning £0.01 per visitor on mobile!

 

[JMI]

I find depends on niche. 20 years in I still consistently have 50%+ over 50's viewing site via desktop.
My research shows the current generation of youth to me are generally a waste of time - they have little or no money to spend on anything. They're not decision makers either. Just mainly want to skim fake newsy click bait articles. I know what your thinking - what happens when these 16 year olds are the new 50y/o - I don't care! I will be a lamb chop in an old peoples home or dead by then anyway.....muwahahahaha!

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

I find depends on niche. 20 years in I still consistently have 50%+ over 50's viewing site via desktop.
My research shows the current generation of youth to me are generally a waste of time - they have little or no money to spend on anything. They're not decision makers either. Just mainly want to skim fake newsy click bait articles. I know what your thinking - what happens when these 16 year olds are the new 50y/o - I don't care! I will be a lamb chop in an old peoples home or dead by then anyway.....muwahahahaha!

yes but... we are taking about adsense so we don't need buyers we need clickers and thats the youth innit..

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

yes but... we are taking about adsense so we don't need buyers we need clickers and thats the youth innit..

No, probably not. According to this, nearly 70% of all "young" web surfers use an ad blocker.
http://www.gemalto.com/review/Pages...ad-blocker-on-a-desktop-or-mobile-device.aspx

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

Well..

No, probably not. According to this, nearly 70% of all "young" web surfers use an ad blocker.
http://www.gemalto.com/review/Pages...ad-blocker-on-a-desktop-or-mobile-device.aspx

I have a plugin which detects statistics on visitors and whether they have an adblocker and can say that statistic is ...'tosh'. TBF it does say on at least one device, they are much rarer on mobile. On the site I am looking at, its a steady 5% of total visitors and over 25% of my visitors are 18-24

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

That's the thing about studies. I'm not saying the one I linked to is perfect, or even "good" - but a counter-example doesn't make it wrong. It just means that the behaviour of your particular audience diverges from what they saw in their sample group.

 

[dazc]

View attachment 1478 Well..


I have a plugin which detects statistics on visitors and whether they have an adblocker and can say that statistic is ...'tosh'. TBF it does say on at least one device, they are much rarer on mobile. On the site I am looking at, its a steady 5% of total visitors and over 25% of my visitors are 18-24

Blocking ads on android is a lot less simple than it is on desktop, hence the difference I guess? Blocking javascript does the trick but not many 18-24's will be doing that.

 

[MurrayMurray is verified member.]

Murray do you make good use of 336x280 or 300x250 and also link ads? On my sites where I have a very high mobile usage percentage (like 60% +) I will use a different ad mix to what I would on a desktop dominant ad. On mobile the 336x280 and 300x250 are I think better than the responsive equivalent so I may not use responsive on a mobile-dominant site.

As per your suggestion, on the Mobile version at the start of the week I switched to a 336x280 size from a responsive unit

Early signs are good

Last Wednesday responsive ad:

£1.11 | 0.61% | CPC 10p

This Wednesday 336x280:

£4.31 | CTR 4.33% | CPC 7p

Down side it looks bulky and horrible, will have to keep an eye on analytics to see if it's putting off users or google from the site

Thanks Steve

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

Thanks for letting me know Murray, really pleased it helped .

 

[EdwinEdwin is verified member.]

If the improvement sticks that's £1,000+ extra a year from that ad! Very nice.

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

If the improvement sticks that's £1,000+ extra a year from that ad! Very nice.

Might be worth a supporter subscription..woohoo