What about earnings?

Borked. :) The worst part is that I've been working on a new additional section for one of the sites. It makes me think twice about wasting advertising slots on the new pages.

Regards...jmcc

Opting out of interest ads and reintroducing the blocklist. Not sure if it will make any difference.

Regards...jmcc

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_adsense/3996859.htm [webmasterworld.com] by incredibill - 11:07 pm on Sep. 27, 2009 (PST -8)

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I am experiencing a very low ctr. 50% of normal. Any one with same case? Please...

September has never been a wild month. People are recovering from spending huge amounts on their vacation and are saving up for the holiday season. Advertisers would be wise to follow this trend :)

I am experiencing a very low ctr. 50% of normal. Any one with same case? Please...

The very same thing here rashidjaved11. My CTR has plummeted this month.

One thing I notice with a low CTR but higher EPC is that the average daily revenue is a lot more volatile. You get good days.. but you also get historically low records. Today really sucked. Adsense really cannot be your main earner anymore.

What is the real root of the problem though? Is it poor quality or ads, poorly targeted ads? Do people have less money and less likely to be shopping? Are they fed up seeing Google ads everywhere? But most importantly, can publishers do anything to fix it?

Wow I know sometimes CTR can be delayed at the start of a day but this is ridiculous.

Just scared myself silly. Using analytics, did a report from Jan 2009 to yesterday showing number of adsense ads clicked. View either weekly or by month and it's showing a perfect downwards slope and today's CTR is nearly 50% down. If I were to extend that line to next summer I've got a CTR of zero and I'm broke!

Reassuring words anyone?

September was at CTR the second worst month together with April 2009.

Only one month with ths worst CTR was March 2009.

CTR was rising from March to July and is falling again since July

I noticed a little upward swing in June as I remember and was a bit optimistic at the time.

Hmm,
The only time I really look on this board is when something bad happens! My CTR is down about 50% in September this year compared with about 20% down for the same period last year.

Then again that's nothing compared to the fact my CTR is down from an average of 2.6% for May to Oct last year to 1.6% this year

If I were to extend that line to next summer I've got a CTR of zero and I'm broke!

m0thman - looking at Adsense revenue, this is 100% true for our sites as well, but the trend has been going on since our peak in 2006. By now, we have been leaving our sites on autopilot for a while and replace Adsense with more profitable affiliate links whenever possible. To me this means that next summer we will switch off Adsense. There is no point in putting ads on your sites if they do not return anything.

[quote]for a while and replace Adsense with more profitable affiliate links whenever possible. [quote]

Hi Zett,

Haven't done anything in terms of using affiliate links... perhaps something to try.

My CTR is plummeting! Down from an average of 1.5-2% the rest of the year to below 1% and 0.6% today.

Another couple of days like this and I might start running aff ads.

From mid August the graph of my CTR is near vertical!

More useless off target rubbish and declining revenues. Naturally I can't use expletives to describe some of the rubbish ads so I guess it is time for the boomstick of the blocklist.

Regards...jmcc

My earnings have held up okayish. Definitely down but in proportion to the CTR surprisingly good. Have lost a little bit of traffic recently but it's in line with my seasonal trends.

This has been my experience as well. CTR is down during the past month or so, but the average revenue per click is about 1.6x what it was when CTR was higher. This could be related to the bad-ad shakedown in AdWords.

Adjusted for seasonality, it seems to work out the same for me now as during previous months. In fact, eCPM for September is around 50 cents higher than August. eCPM so far for October is only 2 cents lower than for September.

So overall my eCPM is now higher than it was before September. I don't know if this was caused by the AdWords shakedown, or if it's the opposite of the effect many people report where eCPM goes down when traffic goes up. Maybe the opposite is true and that's what I am experiencing right now.

The results are in of my test to increase CTR by blocking off-target advertisers. I blocked all 60 of them early in the week.

The result is absolutely no observable change in CTR, EPC or any other metric. Now what?

This kind of tells me it isn't the ads it is the visitors... there are clickers and non-clickers and I'm gradually getting more non-clickers.

This kind of tells me it isn't the ads it is the visitors...

Perhaps increased use of ad blockers?

September was a pretty good month here. So far, October is not looking good at all. :-(

Perhaps increased use of ad blockers?

I think increased use of ad blockers would be unlikely to affect CTR because the ads wouldn't show in the first place.

Dismal CTR today.

Dismal CTR today.

At this point I suspect Google is just failing to count valid clicks. How else could it be this low?

CTR is above average for me, and CPC is through the roof :)

At this point I suspect Google is just failing to count valid clicks. How else could it be this low?

Those who know me know that I am a harsh Google critic for many, many reasons.

Still we have been noticing the CTR drop for ages, and we early on installed a 3rd party tracker to track clicks. While not always identical, both the CTR officially reported by Adsense and the numbers from the independent click-tracker are pretty much "in line". So we believe that the CTR drop is not related to "Google just not counting valid clicks", but more with ad blockers, bad targeting, [Adsense] ad blindness, and financial crisis.

but more with ad blockers

Wouldn't ad blockers kill the impressions too? I'm seeing no drop in impressions, just a huge drop in CTR.

eeek - you are right, of course. Ad blockers should have no impact on CTR. So it's just bad targeting, ad blindness, and financial crisis.

So it's just bad targeting, ad blindness, and financial crisis.

I dunno about ad blindness. Why would it suddenly increase so much in 2008-2009? I think the financial crisis is to blame mostly: consumers aren't interested in buying as much and don't click, and companies don't have as much money for marketing so there's a decrease in quality ads. So we have run of sites ads about bleaching your teeth (eeew) and people obviously don't click them.

Lesson of the story, people still surviving in the current difficult conditions have solid web sites and will do well in the future.

> I think the financial crisis is to blame

Since last month? I had good AdSense earnings in September, but October is way down.

For me, September was the best month since March 09. October looks like it is going to be even better. :)