I've been in that boat for several years now.

Well today is a bit down. It seems like the world is offline celebrating.

Regards...jmcc

I'm up about 20% in Oct. than I was in Sept. in terms of revenue, but the traffic was similar. I hope it continues.

AdSense is an uphill treadmill that spits out porcupines and rattlesnakes, but it sure beats the world outside the treadmill.

I work like crazy only to see occasional modest increases and occasional black holes that eat money.

I am almost 4 years with Adsense.

A quick glance at October 2008:

- Worst month ever in terms of total revenue
- Worst month ever in terms of eCPM
- eCPM dropping like a rock since mid-August. eCPM left typical range around 1st October and is now in free fall.
- CTR is on new all-time low. Again, the value left typical range around 1st October.
- Traffic is still healthy. While traffic growth is not as good as it once was, it is still not reflecting/explaining the behaviour of Adsense.
- Filter is filled about 25%. I am not an avid flea-hunter any longer. I am seeing a bunch of new parked domains and MFAs. I do not understand why Adsense does not remove these. Even *I* could write the algo to do this.

And November?

Well, the early days do not look promising. Not at all. Free fall for total revenue and eCPM seems to have accelerated where I would have expected a slowdown. Now I am seeing figures that make me think of removing Adsense completely. No need to distract my visitors with this %$&%.

This does not make sense.

I find that when my pages have strong traffic, and Google serves relevant ads, I am making as much as I ever did with AdSense.

Traffic, for me is seasonal, and fluctuates through the week, so the traffic part of the equation is hardly constant. But I don't blame Google for that.

But the ad relevancy, well, I find that Google is far worse than it was two years ago. I have some pages that seem to be stuck on the same irrelevant ads, and have been for weeks. AS support runs these up the chain, but never can fix the problem for more than a day or two.

As we saw with the ProtectMarriage ad on Tuesday, Google also is now engaging in run-of-network ad sales, pushing untargeted, irrelevant ads to publishers from selected advertisers. These, simply, do not perform on my site. I suspect that they do not perform for others.

Poor targeting, run-of-network sales - these are steps toward YPN, circa 2006. Not exactly the direction I'd hoped to see G take.

AdSense is an uphill treadmill that spits out porcupines and rattlesnakes, but it sure beats the world outside the treadmill.

I think I'll have to print that one and frame it ;)

I've noticed a decline in revenue over the past month or so, partly because of a normal seasonal dip in traffic but also because CTR is down (which suggests that Google is counting clicks more conservatively, that users are spending more time looking for information and less time buying, or both). The good news is that my site's EPC is at its highest level since 2004--or maybe ever (maybe because advertisers are desperate for clicks?).

I'm having a low season now. For the past years it seems my niche has lower performance at the end of the year :(

October was my 2nd best month ever in terms of total AdSense revenue. eCPM is higher than almost any I hear anyone post here despite the TOS violation. I have 5 sites in my Competitive Ad Filter.

Another AdSense account I manage saw October 2008's earnings rise 50% over 2007. eCPM was also up 50%.

I don't know which market you're in but how can you be sure its your "market" that's pulling down your earnings?

how can you be sure its your "market" that's pulling down your earnings?

In my niche, luxury services for middle and higher income, September to December are low season months. It has always been like this. I see lower traffic, and slightly lower CTR. So I was expecting lower revenues.

This year, the situation seems to be much worse. Traffic is still on previous years level, but CTR (and now EPC as well!) have been dropping like a rock. Basically noone is clicking any more.

Targeting problem? Economy? MFAs? Google now counting clicks differently?

Google now counting clicks differently?

When I look at my stats I'd say they'd have to be counting only your clicks different.

Drastic decrease in CTR and EPC in comparison to last year. The loss of earnings are not even compensated by the massive increase in traffic... :(

Yes.

Google now counting clicks differently?

I have to say that I have conjectured this with other AdSensers outside of this forum since we all have an average of, remarkably, 20% fewer clicks compared to up to a month ago and all with equal or rising traffic levels.

Google's changed something for sure for those of us earning less since others are seeing record earnings.

FWIW my B&M business is doing record business and receiving record enquiries however I do have a good explanation for that.

I think if you look at the economic data it is obvious why people are not clicking -- who wants to buy anything these days?

who wants to buy anything these days?

There are a lot of buyers out there, they're just biding their time and picking off the bargains when they pop up. It's very noticeable with cars with short-time working and extra long Xmas holidays being announced even for models such as the BMW Mini.

I saw one dealer the other day offering a buy one get one free for a STG 20,000 vehicle!

My CTR is off a bit, but CPM more than makes up for it and revenue is definately up so far this month. This is on a large, diverse site with 100K uniques per day.

Google now counting clicks differently?

For the last year or so, Google has been counting clicks only if they occur on the ad title or URL (as opposed to the entire ad, which was countable in the past). The change was made to prevent accidental clicks. Advertisers obviously welcomed the change, and I think it may be one reason why some of us have seen an EPC increase of 60 percent or more in the last year.

It's certainly possible that Google has made some more tweaks to its click-counting procedure that have reduced charges to advertisers--and income to publishers---for accidental, repeated, or otherwise useless clicks. Google's definition of a "valid click" isn't set in stone.

I'm surprised. Even in these financial crisis times some are still up and some are still down. My sites, overall, are steadily going up. Some a lot up and some slightly down.

Mine dropped about 50% since Nov 1st - this is no fun anymore!

I have removed AdSense. I haven't terminated the account and I may test it again one day, but for now I'm outta here.

I'm surprised. Even in these financial crisis times some are still up and some are still down.

Just the other day, I saw a report that said advertising expenditures for financial, automotive, and one other sector that's taken a big hit in the financial crisis (I forget which) were down, while expenditures in a few other categories (travel comes to mind) were up.

Also, changes in the network (more advertiser tools, tweaking of the smart-pricing algorithm, how clicks are counted, growth in the number of pages on given topics serving AdSense ads, etc.) may affect some publishers more than others.

Google's changed something for sure for those of us earning less since others are seeing record earnings.

Yep and it all started on a 'maintenance' day.

October was my best month ever. Yes, the first few days of November were slow, but then again we had a holiday and a weekend to start it off.

Bad month so far. We had Election Day on the 4th, don't know if that caused a drop in revenue with all the political ads.

The next two holidays are Veterans Day and Thanksgiving.

Will have to see if they cause an additional decrease in earnings for this month.

Yep been bad for years now, but even worse last week

same s*it like last monts, and last, and last 2 years

Our CTR has been dropping.

What's curious is, the traffic has remained ROCK SOLID throughout the year. And I have 4 years worth of data behind me.

We saw a big CTR drop when the new changes came into place. But realistically, it's been since about Sept. that the CTR has fallen.

Since nothing else has changed... could it be economic? That we are seeing the effects of the slowed economy? I have a generalized site, and Oct/Nov are our two biggest months.

I read that last month, sales in all retail sectors crashed...?