Will AdSense be finished? Absolutely not. I would be very surprised if AdSense is as much affected as other advertising venues will be.

If you're considering what to do, look around. Are there better options out there? Go after them if so. Me, I think AdSense is the best option for my site. That might not be true for everyone.

will adsense business is going to be finish in near future?

No, because it's the online equivalent of direct-response advertising or direct mail. Such "measured media" tend to do better than other forms of advertising during economic slowdowns because advertisers can track results and justify expenditures.

do you see world depression on your adsense dailty earning?

Traffic is down a bit, CTR is down more, but average EPC is higher than I've seen it in years. Overall, my answer would be "Yes, but things could be worse."

Adsense operations are global

This is a very significant point. Without the Net and if one wanted to advertise globally many have forgotten just how difficult and expensive it would be to do.

signor_john is correct with his "measured media" explanation, AdSense may see a downturn however I would expect it to be an even stronger advertsing format in the future.

YMMV!

effects on the google adword advertiser

Flight to quality. People who already advertise with AdWords will get tighter with their dollars; the percentage of folks foolish enough to just flip the "content" switch rather than pick and choose which websites to advertise on will continue to shrink.

Meanwhile, more dollars that used to be spent on other media will move to AdWords. As Google earnings show, Google is a beneficiary in the short term of the global economic contraction.

For AdSensers, this is a window of opportunity. Not the opportunities of yore, trying to game Google or slap up one-trick ponies for a quick profit, but opportunities for people who act like publishers: providing quality content to readers on the one hand, and relevance to products (read: qualified leads) for advertisers on the other hand.

When I started poking around my left-to-rot AdSense site to see why the payments had started increasing, I was shocked to see a Fortune 500 company targetting me. You can bet I am looking hard at their product line and expanding relevant content.

This is a window of opportunity for little publishers who know how to make quality content and understand the importance of forming direct relationships with advertisers.

The folks who continue to imagine that Google is responsible for giving them traffic or writing them checks, will continue to find life a disappointment.

do you see world depression on your adsense dailty earning?

English pages: disasterouse, 60% less revenues at more visitors
German pages: a little bit, 10% less revenues at more visitors

do you see world depression on your adsense dailty earning?

No, not at all.

The 4th quarter of 2008 was great, and so far this month is running ahead of last January.

Is Global Crisis is Threat for Adsense advertiser?

Short answer: NO

Why? Sheeesh....

I'll get back on this. The idea that people spend LESS money in economic hard times is a myth.

Those who have less spend less.. certainly. Deep pockets will spend more though. Deep pockets take advantage of economic downturns and pour money into their ad campaigns..

I just woke up and haven't even had coffee yet but I'll get back on this in a minute...

Example 1: According to The Advertising Age, most executives at the North American International Auto Show claimed they are reducing this year's marketing and advertising budget considerably.

Example 2: British marketing budgets were revised sharply lower in the fourth quarter, a key industry report showed on Monday, at the sharpest rate since it began charting the sector, with further weakness expected in 2009.

The Bellwether Report, by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), said companies had cut back on spending after seeing their financial prospects deteriorate at a record pace.

Example 3: One-third of chief marketing officers (CMOs) at leading US retailers said that their marketing and advertising budgets have been reduced this season, according to new research.

The study, conducted after the financial market meltdown by BDO Seidman, stated that nearly half (43%) of the retailers say their budget will remain "flat" and only a quarter (25%) cite an increase in advertising and marketing spending this season.

Most of the retailers (57%) will spend the majority of their advertising and marketing budget on print advertising, while 21% will focus on broadcast outlets and 19% on Internet advertising, including social networking sites.

Economic downturn? I've been approached 5 times this month from independant advertisers, all of whom I've turned down. In a good month I get 2 or 3 serious inquiries. I turn them down too. 5 is an all time record. Downturn? Somebody didn't tell my advertisers apparently.

27 websites. 200k unique and highly targeted and I turn them down right and left.. one because I don't have friggin' ROOM... two because my stuff converts better.

I'm going by what I SEE. Not by what the newspaper says should be happening.

If this is hard times I'd like some more of it....

Example 3: One-third of chief marketing officers (CMOs) at leading US retailers said that their marketing and advertising budgets have been reduced this season, according to new research.

Where'd you get this from?

Short answer: NO

A more accurate short answer would be "It depends."

Overall, AdSense revenues (and average publisher revenues) can't help but be impacted by the global economic crisis, but averages are just averages. It's like anything else: When the unemployment rate goes up, that doesn't mean some people aren't getting jobs or raises. And when the economy is moving along at a healthy clip, that doesn't mean some people aren't living in cardboard cartons.

However, the smart business knows that it's a good idea to advertise during down times, to fight for whatever cash does flow.

I'd expect a reduction in bid price in some proportion to reduced probability of success (from widespread spending reduction), and a lower quantity of advertising in proportion to operational reductions and bankruptcies-- but an increase in advertising for the going concerns that remain.

I have noticed from an adwords point of that prices have gone up for my area of interest

Most of the retailers (57%) will spend the majority of their advertising and marketing budget on print advertising

ill-advised retailers. rest assured to see those who have an interest in defending their market will recognize that they are riding a dead horse and will among others be popping up in your ad slots in the near future.

We lost them because they can no longer afford to advertise, or they closed their business. It is not just our high end clients who have left. When a business cancels a low end advertising budget of $3 a month, that really says alot. In the past month, the number of small advertisers who pay by credit card automatically each month and had their payment bounce has skyrocketed. This is something we have NEVER seen before. Our advertisers do not bounce payments to us. It has to be very humiliating to have a $3 payment bounce because there is no money on the credit card. So, the account cancellation comes right after that. Now, I get bounced payments constantly. It is undeniable the online community has been hit, and hit hard.

Then, on to the Adsense advertisers, the same thing has taken place. We are getting slammed with no end in sight. Our big money making B2B site that has carried us for many years, slides more each dsy. Traffic is steady, and has not declined at all, in fact on January 19th we had some of the highest traffic we have seen in the past year. That traffic a year ago, would have earned us three times what we made a few days ago.

One thing that is really a strong indicator of how many businesses are hurting is the number of businesses coming to me requesting our free advertising option. We get at least three requests a day. Normally, we get about three requests a month because most businesses could not pass up the very cheap low end account option.

The money is now coming from different sectors, with smaller and newer sites we own filling some of the revenue voids our cornerstone web site has left wide open. If not for those sites, we would be sunk right now. Because this down turn may not end in the next year, we are throwing all our effort into those smaller sites that are carrying the ball right now.

I've been on the web for 17 years and working on the web making a full time income for 10 years, I've never seen anything like this.

will adsense business is going to be finish in near future?

The amount Google keeps from AdSense revenue used to be 17% of total revenue, now it's 5%. From 2004-2006, average quarterly publisher revenue growth was about 14% but the last two years it's been 4.54% and last year was 0.71%. Quarterly revenue growth for the last 4 quarters was 3.24%, -0.83%, 1.44%, -1.02%. As you can see, last quarter publishers saw a decrease in revenue even though there was an increase in AdSense revenues.

Cost per click has been continually dropping overall. Google cut some projects and if AdSense performance doesn't improve, I wouldn't be surprised.

Google makes most of it's money from it's own sites and cares more about advertisers than publishers so they have been helping advertisers find ways to reduce CPC. That's just going to make things worse for publishers along with everything else going on in the economy.

It seems like Google might have raised their standards and have been disabling a few more accounts lately and being more aggressive with arbitragers. For Q2 and Q3 the Google Float actually went down. Getting rid of some of the crappy sites and cheaters might have helped CPC not fall as far. They might need to trim some more fat in the future to keep advertisers and publishers happy.

do you see world depression on your adsense dailty earning?

I've seen a bit of a drop in CPC and I've read others have seen the same. Some have reported big drops as high as 60%.

Google works hard to bring down the cost per click to keep it's advertisers happy, they've said so in their last earnings conference call. They develop tools to help them find variations on keywords that aren't as competitive.

it's done for them. I see CPC down about 50% for the clicks we advertise. I get the same amount of traffic for 1/2 of price. i see it mostly in the financial area.

I see CPC down about 50% for the clicks we advertise.

I've seen a substantial increase in EPC over the past 15 months or so, which suggests that advertisers are paying quite a bit more for clicks on our many long-tail keyphrases.

A recent report suggested that savvy advertisers have been buying more "long-tail" keywords and fewer highly competitive keywords. That's bad for publishers who have build their businesses around obvious "money" keywords and keyphrases, but it's good for publishers who have focused on building strong, diversified content within their topics.

Also, some topics are likely to fare better in the current economy than others are. It may be a bad time to publish a site about credit cards and mortgages, but people who publish advice about hoarding guns, prospecting for gold, and building cabins in the woods may be doing okay.

I've seen a substantial increase in EPC over the past 15 months or so, which suggests that advertisers are paying quite a bit more for clicks on our many long-tail keyphrases.

as advertiser not a publisher.

I also see as advertiser better ROI from AdSense then AdWords. CPC on AdSense is much lower than AdWords.

I think it is 'whistling past the grave yard' to believe continued corporate downsizing, smaller advertising budgets, and defaults coupled with high unemployment and lack of impulse buying by the public will not mean big changes for Adsense publishers.

I think the logic in Frontpage's posts are solid. Denial is a powerful force.

But, those who have said "it depends" make a good point. It depends on the niche.

What should not be forgotten about these serious downturns is not just the lack of spending/lack of income, as much as that tends to grab our attention.

Serious downturns also tends to get managers to look at how they are doing business and trying new things. So, if you are new in a niche, this might be your opportunity to get attention. If your niche hasn't use Google's ads in the past, you might, indeed, see an uptick.

And, if you are one of the leaders (or are seen that way), people might be coming after your share of the market like never before. Yikes.

If you're relying on Adsense/Adwords a great deal, my advice, as always, is install an ad management program on your site if you don't have one (Google's Admanager is OK, we tested it but went having software on our server). Then start approaching the major players in your market directly about buying ads. People are now looking for new ideas. If you did this once before and it didn't work, it's time to try again.

Likewise, if you are buying ads via Google, take a look at carving out a bigger share of the market by partnering with several of the independent web sites that serve your industry. Give them a call and have a chat. A big ol' banner across the top of the top 10 second-tier web sites in your market for three months might do wonders and cost a heck of a lot less than you think.

Us? We're doing both.

I've seen a substantial increase in EPC over the past 15 months or so, which suggests that advertisers are paying quite a bit more for clicks on our many long-tail keyphrases.

Quarterly publisher revenues declined in 2 of the past 4 quarters.. Even google has been stating in their financial reports that their EPC has been dropping since 2004. The only reason they saw revenues increase was because the number of clicks kept increasing.

Either you're in a market that has greater advertising demand during these times or you missed out on a whole lot of money in the past.

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:31 am (utc) on Jan. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] See TOS #19. [/edit]

The amount Google keeps from AdSense revenue used to be 17% of total revenue, now it's 5%.

Well that's just plain false. Federated Media outed their average take on a conference call about 2 years ago. It was briefly discussed on this forum. If I remember correctly, Google was keeping somewhere between 35%-40%. Not sure where you got your number.

Well that's just plain false.

No it's not. First, you misinterpreted what I said. I didn't say that Google keeps 5% of AdSense revenue, I said the amount Google keeps accounts for only 5% of total revenue.

Basically. (AdSense Revenue - Paid To Publishers) / (AdSense Revenue + Google Sites Ad Revenue) = 5%

As for the 35-40%, Google keeps a lot less than that. Last quarter it was only about 13%, the quarter before that it was 11%. Highest reported quarter was 23% in 4Q04.

If you check Google's SEC filings it's in there.

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:33 am (utc) on Jan. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] TOS #24 [/edit]

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:34 am (utc) on Jan. 25, 2009]
[edit reason] TOS#19. [/edit]

What you're saying is no different than those house peddlers that kept saying "real estate is local". Sure you can find a few people that are doing better than they were before, but each day new AdSense publishers get added to the pool. Meanwhile, publisher revenue is not increasing, it actually decreased last quarter.

I tried explaining it in a post that got deleted. The economic crisis didn't happen today, it's been happening for over a year now. The housing market first experienced trouble in 2006. It's only now that people accept it and give it a name.

Internet advertising has been on a decline for a while now to and earlier last year two big boys, myspace and facebook had changed their their revenue outlook for 2008.

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:35 am (utc) on Jan. 25, 2009]