Right now I'm chasing down something or other that is causing ads not to load. I don't think it's AdSense because I'm seeing it for all my ad networks. We haven't done any changes on our end (working on a new site layout) but there was a WordPress and a Genesis update this week, and I'm trying to figure out if one of those caused it. If you use either of those technologies you might want to spot check your ads to see if you're seeing any issues.

Use WordPress and Genesis on my main site and ads are loading fine. Almost instant, at least to the dwindling supply of visitors that do not have an ad blocker.

So far today my US CTR is almost zero, diabolical, WTF gives?

Friday has been a little better than rest of the week but RPM is still lower (around 20%) than my usual.

If yesterday is any indication of my future AdSense earnings then I'm at the end of the tracks.

PVs - Highest this month
Clicks - Just over my average
RPM - Lowest this month
Earnings - Second-lowest this month
EPC - Lowest this month

If previous years are anything to go by then next week, traditionally, ought to see a recovery however I very, very much doubt it, when I do not get any earnings from my own country, well, it's game over.

Earnings drop by 50% .. :(

I don't know what's happening with you guys but this month is leading to be one of the best months in years for us.

@deuces lucky for you that you have the best months in years. What is your niche?

I'm also experiencing a very low earning/very low CPC compared to my previous years. I also notice a significant drop of CPC in mobile device traffic compared to desktop.

All dead! Traffic is good, but payment is nightmare!

Silence is upon us!

PVs normal
CTR ok
USA EPC smashed to bits
Earnings less than Xmas Day!

lucky for you that you have the best months in years. What is your niche?

We don't disclose that here except in the most general of terms.

In other news, I had a nice big round of ad-clicking bots yesterday from Amazon, XLHost and a few other hosts. So there's that. In case anyone cares, these are the IP ranges I blocked for hitting thousands of pages; not all of them generated clicks, but it was way unusual behavior for this time of year. The 54.* ones are all Amazon, of course.

# 2016 Bots
deny from 54.161
deny from 54.163
deny from 54.159
deny from 54.157
deny from 206.222
deny from 64.79.94
deny from 173.244.168
deny from 68.233.247
deny from 199.193.115
deny from 162.216.5
deny from 81.94.192

More mobile traffic = lower Adsense earnings
This morning, I'm at 90% mobile 10% tablet
About the only time, people still use a desktop computer is at work.
Old Folks may still boot up the PC to surf the web :)

Really slow today. 17 clicks so far, haven't even reached £1. It seems that individual clicks are paying very little today. Hopefully it will take off a little better this afternoon when people are open about more.

One interesting piece of article published recently on TechCrunch : "The $8.2 Billion Adtech Fraud Problem That Everyone Is Ignoring"

[techcrunch.com...]

About the only time, people still use a desktop computer is at work.
Old Folks may still boot up the PC to surf the web :)

We still get most of our traffic and the vast majority of our revenue from desktop, laptop, and tablet users. And, if we're to believe Quantcast, those users aren't just old folks.

I suspect that my Millennial son is typical of the users who are generating significant affiliate revenues (and decent AdSense revenues) for our editorial site: He spends a lot of time on his smartphone, but when he's ready to buy or book, he goes to his laptop.

The more people use the Internet, the more advertising there is going to be. However, nobody likes advertising at the best of times, which is obviously a downside when you want to make money from advertising. The people who make these mobile apps couldn't give two hoots about people like us, they want to make money from creating apps that block advertising. It's a crying shame really because AdSense doesn't really inhibit a person's enjoyment when they are browsing a website. Okay, there are some exceptions, but if you put your ads in the right place the person can still read the content without having the adverts get in the way. But you only have to look at YouTube, how long will it be before every video has an advert before it that you have to sit through? And since Google own YouTube, they can do what the hell they like.

It's true that our ads are far less obtrusive to a users browsing experience than a lot of what's out there. But it's the stuff that is out there that is obtrusive that is making users block all ads more and more. Heck... even *I* block ads now; but at least I do it in a way that lets me allow some sites to post ads.

Because my ads are pretty much linked to the user's interests a lot of my users would really like the ads. Unfortunately, due to Google's rules, I cannot tell them that.

This needs to change.

If only we were publishers for Facebook where the ads are way more contextually relevant. Where the ads actually look interesting and are visual; maximum of 20% text in ads Facebook ads. Where users can actually leave comments on paid ads. Oh yeah and where the advertisers are companies people have heard of or likely will in the future. Absolutely 0 affiliate and fat belly ads at Facebook.

Google only cares about YouTube for its display income at this point. People love YouTube. And why shouldn't they? It's mostly copyright infringed upon material that Google turns a blind eye to. So Google gets free copyright protected content and earns billions by ramming ads down peoples throats. Or you can pay $10 not to see the ads.

There are not many websites that I visit that do not display my own browsing history. I also see one hell of a lot of Google's own ads on lots of other websites. My particular niche doesn't really display relative ads here in the UK. However in the US there are obviously a lot more businesses related to my niche and therefore a lot of ads that do appear on pages are displaying relative ads to my users in those countries. What I do sometimes is ask a couple of friends in the US and Canada to browse my website and tell me what they are seeing. I would say that 90% of my visitors come from the US, as does most of my earnings. So it's interesting to know what ads are shown to US/North American visitors

Google only cares about YouTube for its display income at this point.

About 71 percent of the AdSense ads on our site over the past seven days have been display ads, and those ads have been earning higher "impression RPM" than our text ads. YMMV.

I've given up bothering about ads now. We are given the choice to display ads, or text and display ads, if you want display ads only, you start getting pestered by Google asking you to change back again. I've done so much testing, I think I found the best position and the best size ads for the time being. Earnings are nowhere near as good as they were two years ago, but I'm still doing three figures each month so it's not all doom and gloom.

Ironside gets it.

Today very low CPC but CTR is little bit lower then ussual but CPC is very low 50% down today. Do you think some firms still dont have budget for this year / month and better will be from half of January? Or this bad will be forever?

My Millennial son and all of his friends use adblocker. Spend most of their online time on mobile phones, and only use a desktop to play games or while at work.

Really dire here. I don't know what happened to adsense. It's total collapse. Looks like this is going to be forever.

A question for those of you who are finding things really dire at the moment, what size, where and how many ad units have you got on your pages? I am more convinced now that mobile phone use is responsible for downfall earnings. Two or three years ago 336 x 280 ad unit placed at the very bottom of my article would bring in shed loads of money. I don't even have an AdSense unit at the end of my contract now, I've replaced it with a 600 x 250 media.net unit which does very very well indeed.

What I've done now is put two units in the left-hand column above a menu. First of all I have my 90 x 200 link unit which does very well. Directly underneath that I have a responsive which renders really well on mobile phones and looks good. If you are looking at the website the desktop, it normally displays as a 160 x 600 skyscraper, on a mobile phone into small rectangle. I have now gone over to 300 x 600 ad units which are located within my text, more than often above the fold embedded in text. These are doing quite well as well. I found that all of these units, even the non-responsive units show really well on the most popular phones. People are moving away from small mobile phones so I don't think there's too much to worry about regarding units being too big for the viewing area. Having said that, I've now come to realise that a non-responsive large ad unit which comes up before the first body of content may not be the best idea. Therefore my large 300 x 600 ad units placed at the top of the page are actually floated to the right which means they don't come up first. The only ad units that appear at the top of the page on a mobile other smaller ad units, which means you get a nice little compact AdSense unit, but you haven't got to scroll 4 miles to reach the content.

I know a lot of you guys like analysing all the figures like rpm etc, but I don't think that really benefits you when it comes to making more money. I found that the best way is to try units in different places, if after a month a unit has and you enough money to make it worthwhile then move it.

Every time it rains
It rains pennies from heaven
Don't you know each cloud contains
Pennies from heaven

And Google has determined that's all you're going to get!

RPM is a metric used to determine the effectiveness of your "relative" improvements that associate more or less with ads serving and bidding environment, generic ads placements and overall effectiveness. In other words, you look at your RPM before and after change within your own website. And you can also generally compare RPM with other niche to determine the strength of ads between niches.

I think most of us that having bad rpm is generally related to ad serving weather and timing at the moment. The weather is becoming warmer and RPM as of today is about 10~20% higher than this month's low (still 60% lower from the holiday high).

With your case, ad blindedness may be to blame, media net's ad does look different than the widely pushed adsense, and at the end of your articles it look like a menu to the rest of other articles. Use it by all means to get more $, I would with your niche. You could probably make more if you promote specific products within your articles with affiliates, I think your readers can benefit from those recommendations too. You do operate in a niche with pretty strong buying intent. People probably will do anything to make their life easier while keeping their fish alive.

The small mobile ad performs extremely poorly at my niche, entertainment related stuff. Ad blindness and non buying intent basically puts the ad space above the fold at like 0.01~0.05 rpm for US traffic. I stopped bothering with it at all after a few tests here and there. I am evolving towards focusing on creative ways to shove more big ads while still serving my users well.

Simple monetary figure comparison isn't good because of the PV fluctuations with traffic.

If you are simply testing for ad placement, CTR % is probably a better metric.

@Frank thanks, some very interesting points that I have taken on board. Actually, I have an affiliate account with eBay which does bring in some money. It's difficult to say exactly what products are selling the best because you are given that specific information, but I think it's definitely good related to fish keeping that probably make the most money. Earnings can vary with my eBay affiliate account, some months I don't get anything, other months it could be £50. I have been experimenting with small rectangular picture units which I have embedded within relating content. I've also used simple links as well which are probably more likely to get people clicking.

Thankfully for me most of my visitors are from the US, even though I were UK-based website. But I decided to go with.com domain which I think was probably the best move. I think if I'd stuck.co.uk website wouldn't have done anywhere near as well. The problem with the UK is there just aren't enough people in the hobby to make good money compared to the US. So when it comes to eBay affiliate for instance, I have to choose the US when using banners for instance, basically that means everything is shown in dollars. It's a working project which I am still trying to get to grips with. My hit rate did suffer for some strange reason, but that has crept up to over 3000 hits a day again which is why think earnings have increased slightly with AdSense. That's crap top