Dunno. Not my experience at all (and I've been using them since they were announced)

How long has it been since you switched?

2 days. my RPM is $1.67 now. super depressing. I may have to go back to regular ads and just do some JavaScript detecting

You need WAY more than two days. Come back in two weeks to a month and tell us how they're doing.

Perhaps, but within that span I could be out thousands of $. First two days my CPC actually slightly increased, but my CTR absolutely got demolished.

Two days isn't long enough. Did you also change the location of the ads on the page?

What exactly do you mean by the "formatting is usually broken"? It sounds like you need to double-check your code implementation.

What do you mean by formatting is broken?

My experience was similar. I lost a significant amount of earnings at first. Seemed to take almost a month for the earnings to stabilize.

Deciding whether to stick with them should also depend on how many mobile users you have. If your user base is overwhelmingly desktop, I think you have good reason not to use responsive ads. But if, like many publishers, your user base is increasingly moving to mobile (mine is majority mobile on weekends and at night) I'd stick with responsive, as netmeg suggests. You need at least a month with them to see how they'll really do.

I never had a dip like yours, but my experience with responsive ads has been good. But then again, I had to make the change -- so many of my visitors are moving to mobile, I really didn't have a choice. But I'm happy with the results so far.

@Swanny007 the responsive ad doesn't seem to morph well, it just cuts off part of the ad to fit in the space

@martinibuster What exactly needs to stabilize? I'm curious what is happening in the background.

The sizes and positions of the ads are nearly the same.

it just cuts off part of the ad to fit in the space

I would look at your css to see what they are using to determine the ad size. I did see some initially malformed looking ads when first using the responsive units after changing an old page to new layout/design/css. They adjusted properly after an hour or so. Make sure you are allowing css files to be crawled.

I assume you are not resizing the window after the page has loaded, because in that situation, the ad doesn't respond.

However I would guess that you are using smart sizing - where you have to assume they deliver the correct sized ad.

It seams to me that it is much better to use the so called advanced option where you choose the ad size and shape you want for different sized windows.
For me this has the added benefit that if I am working on the site, I replace the ad with a blanc image, and I can make that change size at the same points as the AS ad.

i think i found my issue. i also switched to ssl

[seroundtable.com...]

[edited by: martinibuster at 2:56 am (utc) on Sep 23, 2014]
[edit reason] Fixed URL [/edit]

I don't think it's anything to do with SSL. I recently had a drastic drop in RPM, and I did nothing. I was suspecting I had been smart priced (even though my advertisements are clearly labeled as such...), but i'm seeing quite a few others complaining about a large drop. Note that my website has never had issues with seasonal changes (except around holidays/january).

I suspect that something else is going on. Hopefully Google gets it sorted soon because it's really depressing seeing a 75% drop in RPM, especially when your site has record breaking traffic.

In the meantime, i've restored my media.net ads and I'm going to work with the account rep to increase RPM.

eek2121 that is very strange! It's just weird to me that exactly when I switch to SSL, it tanks. My CPC is fine, it's my CTR that is dropped like a rock.

Did you read this thread?
[webmasterworld.com...]

I was told by someone that if I switch back to HTTP that visitors would be forced to HTTPS because of some 301 redirect TTL cache, which would then show a broken site. Does that make sense? Is it possible for me to switch back?

btw, a google agent told me that the Adsense and Search team do not communicate for conflict of interest. ugh!

btw, a google agent told me that the Adsense and Search team do not communicate for conflict of interest. ugh!

My conversations with representatives from Google suggest that as well. It's not a bad idea -- they want their search results to remain trustworthy; that's the whole reason behind the Panda and Penguin algorithm updates over the past few years -- but I understand why it's frustrating, because you'd think that AdSense reps would know what the search team wants.

I think that Google updates their algorithm so often -- hundreds of times a year -- that it's probably impossible for even their own employees to keep up.

they want their search results to remain trustworthy

Then they should go back to what they were doing in the beginning and stop giving results for what they think I mean. <sigh>