"This is the end. Anybody remember 2008-09? Back then - and you can check some of the posts around here - I warned people that the economy was going into the tank. It did. It's doing it again, and, what's worse, we never really recovered from the onslaught from 08-09. Businesses will be failing by the thousands, but Google and Amazon and Microsoft and banking interests and rich oligarchs will party on because they have stolen all the important assets and have captured governments."

Hi Fearlessrick, you're RIGHT! Thanks for putting goog-publishers' sharp downward slide into the earnings abyss into perspective.

I had my best year ever with AdSense last year and my best month ever in December. January is in the tank but this is expected as ad spending isn't great the first couple of weeks of the year.

So to me at least, AdSense is far from dead.

Ironside, Conversant does better than media.net and usually not as good as Adsense, though it sometimes does better (when a page gets lots of hits but few clicks). I use the plain vanilla campaign, and I used to fiddle around with settings and such, but decided to let them do their thing and my CPM is pretty good. I like Conversant because they are essentially non-invasive and not out to conquer the world, like Google and/or Bing/Yahoo. As I stated before, multiple revenue streams are good.

Here's something I do which may or may not appeal to some people. I sell stuff on eBay, things that are directly related to my site, and always link to extensive descriptions on my site. You have to be careful because eBay has guidelines, so don't overdo it, but, as long as you're not trying to circumvent the selling of the item ON EBAY, you should be good to go. I can generate quite a bit of traffic via this method and use it all the time. Bay gives you 50 free auctions or Buy It Nows a month, so might as well put them to good use. Sometimes I complain when I actually sell an item off eBay because I'll no longer be getting the traffic and $$. It's a pretty good gig, though, if you have a niche. You buy stuff for a little money, make money off it via advertising, then sell it for five times what you paid. Actually, my markup is enormous. I buy things for say 50 cents, that I sell for $6-10. In between, I may make two or three bucks from ad traffic, so it's a real win-win-win.

I should point out, as I did in 2008, that those of us doing business on the internet may be best able to ride out financial storms because the internet is still generally unregulated and still somewhat new, a "final frontier"if you will. So, the future, as always, belongs to the savvy and the brave.

Be a happy warrior.

The quality advertisers are now over at Facebook. CPC prices are never returning to the levels we used to see on AdSense.

I dunno about that; I'm currently managing about $50k per month in AdWords spend between three clients. And some of my CPCs are over fifty bucks a pop in one niche (no, don't even bother asking). Granted most of that is search, but two of them want to substantially up their Remarketing campaigns (and that goes into Display)

But it's true, I've been seeing a lot of low rent text ads on some of my sites. Probably time for a housecleaning; it's been a long time since I've wandered into the Ad Review Center.

[edited by: netmeg at 4:08 pm (utc) on Jan 5, 2016]

Click reporting must be slow coming in today, or at least I hope so. It's about 25% lower than recent days.

CPC yesterday $0.33 and at this moment $0.36. Last month it was $0.47.

I hope that in the second half of January everything will be as it is supposed to be in 2015.

Things are very slow today as well. Mind you, yesterday was extremely slow but we did end up with a relatively decent day.

Things rose a little bit (by a little bit I mean like 13 cents per 1000) yesterday, but now they're back to ridiculously low levels. I can't keep going like this. :(

How often does everyone spend an hour or two in the ad review center? Do you find it benefits you much?

As for us - everything is down by half compared to December. Adsense is much less affected compared to some of the networks. This is to be expected in the first two weeks of the year. In these quieter times we focus on long term content rather than news etc.

As per google request I made my site responsive / mobile compatible and my CPC dropped from $0.09 to $0.03. Although I'm having 60% more clicks my earnings decreased in about 30%.

I hope to recover on the third week of January.

Seems to be a common trait among publishers today - increased clicks, decreased earnings and with no solution in sight for our part. At the mercy of what advertisers are willing to pay now that they've gotten use to online marketing trends. I'm at 2011 levels myself (earnings-wise).

Hope 2012-2013 doesn't turn out to be just a fond memory one day - that's when Adsense peaked for me. I've been looking for the "recovery" since but a third straight down year will be a pattern and a sad sign of things to come.

Not really sure what's happening today, it's hardly got off the mark. It was going quite well at one stage, then nine clicks and several £s were taken off me, that's not happening for a long time.

"This is the end. Anybody remember 2008-09? Back then - and you can check some of the posts around here - I warned people that the economy was going into the tank. It did. It's doing it again, and, what's worse, we never really recovered from the onslaught from 08-09. Businesses will be failing by the thousands, but Google and Amazon and Microsoft and banking interests and rich oligarchs will party on because they have stolen all the important assets and have captured governments."

I fear this the most but it's the TRUTH. I feel so helpless.

Wishing for the red bar today. Can't believe how low my revenue is right now. Normally I'd be hitting this amount around 6am; NOT 6PM.

Adsense for me has hit the skids the past few days. I'm not shocked, but hopefully this is temporary and that some of my maturing assets that were cashing out over the past couple of weeks can bounce back. If this does continue, I will likely not be checking on a daily basis. If I'm encouraged, I'll check in.

Low RPM continue to reign on Wednesday as well :(
C'mon google.

I just want to sleep for a month...

Did u get message today that u have blocked some ads wich can increase ur earnings by 55%?

Not good, the past couple of days for me has seen CTR down 40% therefore click volume down and together with an EPC at the bottom of my normal range, it's looking horrible.

I feel everyone's pain, two years ago I was easily doing £600 (approximately) each month. This month I will be thankful if I do half of that.

How often does everyone spend an hour or two in the ad review center? Do you find it benefits you much?

I don't spend any time at all in the ad-review center. I regard AdSense as a "set and forget" solution: I provide the space, and Google supplies the ads for the categories that I allow.

As for us - everything is down by half compared to December. Adsense is much less affected compared to some of the networks. This is to be expected in the first two weeks of the year. In these quieter times we focus on long term content rather than news etc.

It really depends on your topic. For our topic, this is the time of year when things start hopping in terms of both AdSense and affiliate revenue. (Our quietest time of year is from about mid-November to late December.)

Surely you would have to have a very special website before somebody is going to pay good money to have their adverts showing? I don't know if there's any way to find out if you have got people who are targeting your website specifically for adverts? I reckon I earn between 30p & 60p per click my larger ad units. Occasionally I will get some clicks that and twice, three times or sometimes more. But I'm certainly not going to spend ages in the ad revenue centre because I don't think you would gain anything by doing. I prefer to spend my time optimising the website so I can get as many businesses, as possible.

Does anyone else feel we should be having a red bar?

AdSense v my metrics today make absolutely no sense, AdSense looks way behind or G has data loss going on ... my highest earning country so far today after 10 hours or so is India, that has never happened before at this point of the day.

I'm actually good today.

My RPM in the first week of January is less than half December's RPM. Looking on the bright side, in previous years EPC/RPM has started to climb from around January 8th. Well that's my pipe dream and I'm sticking to it.

I don't bother with the ad review centre. It doesn't provide you with useful information and the time spent there tends to be counterproductive. Like our wheelchaired detective friend, I prefer to use my time building content rather than chasing junk ads and/or my tail.

My RPM in the first week of January is less than half December's RPM. Looking on the bright side, in previous years EPC/RPM has started to climb from around January 8th. Well that's my pipe dream and I'm sticking to it.

A lot hinges on the economic situation, which resumed its downward slide this week. As one person above said, the end looks near for the economy.

I hope no one overspent on Christmas shopping.....

I hope no one overspent on Christmas shopping.....

UK - The amount of money being borrowed by consumers in the run-up to Christmas rose by £1.5bn, the largest rise for nearly eight years.

That's USD 2.2+bn and just for November, what will December reveal?

[bbc.co.uk...]

The click volume was back to normal for me yesterday however my EPC was dire, both the UK AND India outearned the USA where my EPC was 39.4% of this last month's average and 54.3% of January so far ... Horrible, horrible, horrible!

Like everybody else, earnings have dramatically dropped in the last two years. However, I have to respectfully disagree with some individuals who are suggesting that AdSense is dead because it obviously isn't or we would all be in the same boat. Maybe it's a good idea to completely revamp your website layout and change the position of the ads completely? I've decided to redesign my website and make it look more like a magazine layout. So rather than just having paragraphs of text, I'm going to try and may be put a couple of blocks of text together, scattered photos throughout with AdSense units included within. I've tried AdSense units in the right-hand column I just don't get much interest in them. The majority of my earnings come from a single link unit, and AdSense units within the text. If I go onto a website I don't take any notice of the right-hand column, however I'm much more likely to click on an ad if it's within the text I am reading.