jbayabas,

Yes, I am on YouTube, and I have been hit very hard by all of this.

For me this started at the beginning of this year, and it looks like we are stuck with this.

For me the big sign things were not right was when February came along and nothing improved from a very poor result in January.

Google(Goog) was floated(Stock exchange) under their new Company name ' Alphabet' in October 2015...from here they have dispersed various company properties under different umbrella's.

Sergey Brin(Co - Founder Google) is now to be running the scaled down version of Google whilst Larry Page(Co - Founder Google) concentrates on Alphabet and other new and related enterprises

This was also around the time(Announced August 2015) they removed their YouTube Ad inventory from " Double Click Ad Exchange" which would have had an effect on many publishers.

See following article

**************

Wave Digital Media

Understanding why google took you-tube inventory away from the doubleclick ad exchange


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As mentioned I have seen some major drops in RPM which is calculated on CTR and click pricing(average) etc.

my CTR took a major hit.

So, now I must increase my traffic exponentially to earn an acceptable amount.

Though, on current trends with the ever lowering CTR, more traffic would lower that CTR even further, which will mean even more traffic is required.

So, as we increase our traffic under these current conditions, our earnings increase would only be quite small regardless of how high number of additional page views.

Thanks for that @NickMNS. I guess the take home message is that "It's important to remember that any ad that appears on your content pages has won the auction for that space." So if advertisers are winning the auction with $0.01 AUD bid that's a pretty sad state of affairs.

@jjoz no not exactly $0.01AUD probably, 0.02$ or 0.03$ as Google has to keep their piece of the pie.

Bottom line is, too many publishers and not enough advertisers. we are nothing more than a cheap commodity. The only way to stay afloat is to grow traffic and differentiate your offering by carving a niche. But then, if you have a specific marketable niche you would probably be better off adopting an affiliate model targeted at that niche, as opposed to a generalized PPC model.

** USER INTENT **

Just puttin it out there.

** USER INTENT **

"User intent" meaning that people have stopped clicking? Other metrics suggest otherwise. Plus the downturn has been too steep and sudden. It's hard to believe that half the web-browsing world woke on New Year's Day 2016 and made a resolution not to click any more ads. Not to suggest that user behaviour isn't changing but clearly some levers have been pulled at Mountain View.

I dont know why earnings have dipped so quickly, but i think its a no brainer that google will move away from publishers, if only because of the growing adblocker issue.

They are not giving any indication that they are "moving away". If anything, they always seem to be trying to sign up new publishers 24/7. As for the older ones, I guess they abandon them to their fates.

I currently see lots of ads that are neither matched to content of relevant pages, nor are based on my interests and browsing history (like, say, cold rolled steel from China or, say, laser-tag clubs in my city). I have an impression that Google serves them just because the ads are there and they need to put them someplace other than their own sites so, "what the heck, let's put them on this poor guy's blog about something that is completely irrelevant to our inventory, but who cares, lol."

@nektotigra

Google serves them just because the ads are there and they need to put them someplace

Yes exactly, and as a result you get paid little bit more. Remember ads appear based on a bidding system. Even if the advertiser pays only $0.01 for the irrelevant ads, this penny pushes up the price of the other ads on your site, that means that you will be paid $0.02 when a user clicks on an ad that is relevant, because the irrelevant advertiser needs to bid incrementally higher to get the spot. It could be reversed where the irrelevant ad out bids the relevant one but that is unlikely. Regardless the end result is you get paid marginally more.

@Ebuzz, I don't think anyone is suggesting that Google is dropping the business outright. What we are suggesting is that the focus and the bulk of the resources is shifting away from desktop display ads to other more mobile friendly solutions. Google reported an increase of 29% in PPC and drop of 9% in CPC yoy. The sharp increase was from mobile devices, and it offset the drop. More ads appearing for less, where the more is occurring on mobile.

Has anybody seen this?
Introducing the next generation of ads from AdSense. They’re called “Page-level ads,” and in this video we’ll learn all about them.
[youtube.com...]
I had message for it in my adsense account when I logged in.

March was the BEST, and APRIL is the worst month for me as there is a HUGE drop in earnings. Don't know what to do :(

I've had page level ads enabled for several months ago. I don't notice any difference in revenue.

@NickMNS

Yes exactly, and as a result you get paid little bit more. Remember ads appear based on a bidding system. Even if the advertiser pays only $0.01 for the irrelevant ads, this penny pushes up the price of the other ads on your site, that means that you will be paid $0.02 when a user clicks on an ad that is relevant

I can't agree with you on this. Irrelevant ads outbid those that could get a user's interest and as a result I don't get even a single click. At least, that's what I actually see.

I've been doing some number crunching 2016 v 2015 since I noticed that my overall desktop earning's percentage was increasing whereas a year ago it was decreasing and I found the following all based upon January 1st to April 26th 2015 v 2016:

Desktop has gone from 61.3% to 65.4%, in fact in April so far it is 67.8%, and only this time last year I was forecasting that desktop would drop below the 50% mark for me.

Obviously this means that overall tablet and smartphone earnings are down however:

2016 Tablet PVs are 116.69% v 2015
2016 Smartphones PVs are 139.54% v 2015

But actual click volumes:

2016 Tablet 53.34% v 2015
2016 Smartphones 57.69% v 2015

This has resulted with actual tablet and smartphone earnings v 2015:

Tablets 46.53%
Smartphones 59.59%

Obviously simply to standstill I would have to more than double my PVs if all metrics stayed the same and presumably this huge drop in click volume is due to anti-fraud/accidental clicks.

The other very interesting comparison is EPC (CPC):

Desktop - Amazingly 100% the same
Tablet - 87.23% v 2015
Smartphone - 103.23% v 2015

How do these metrics stack up against yours?

Anyone notice any issues with page views this morning? RPM high, earnings within normal range, but page views is very low.

@redbar I saw similar results, you see what I wrote on page 13 of the March adsense thread.

@nektotigra if irrelevant ads are outbidding relevant ones for your site then there must be something wrong. Either advertisers are specifically avoiding your site or Google is misinterpreting your content or your niche is so small that there is not enough demand. But I seriously doubt any of this.

The other issue is, how have you determined that the ads are irrelevant? Are your users are seeing the same ads?
If it is what you see when you surf your site, then be weary. If you cleared your cache and your surfing incognito then Google will have trouble guessing your intent. But this is only you, your user will rarely surf like this, they will have browser history. So the ads they see will be far more relevant and clickable.

vegasrick -- I'm seeing that, too. RPM is increasing while page views remain stagnant.

@vegasrick yes, same issue and now redbar on my account which might fix this. but overall everyday its getting worse and worse. so I better not to talk about that.

Yep, pageviews are serioulsy stuck.

Just checked, I see the same. Adsense is showing about 50% of GA

Incredibly low PVs, clicks and earnings, in fact almost zero across the board for me, fubard and red bar.

Same problem here. My RPM is in double figures but my PVs are one tenth of what they usually are. Perhaps the Adsense monkey who usually winds back clicks and earnings has mistakenly wound back pageviews.

Do you guys get a lot of blank ads? I've never experienced this in years since I've been Adsense. Really terrible ad fill rate.

I have seen just a few blank AS spaces on my websites. Has anyone here ever used adreclaim.com which shows ads when people are using ad blockers?

Has anyone here ever used adreclaim.com

I saw mention of them last week but can't find anything beyond their own marketing. Based in Israel apparently but nothing online about their publishers or advertiser base. Probably a start-up.

The blank ads only happens in Safari. Could be just a browser issue.

It has been an hour since I last checked my adsense stats, and Adsense is stuck. It hasn't moved.

"User intent" meaning that people have stopped clicking?

User intent as in what people come to your site for, and whether or not they are really looking to click on an ad (particularly on a mobile device, assuming they even see it) or actually buy something or sign up for something off it, which certainly affects how much value your sites have to advertisers.

I do a lot of display network advertising for clients. Sites that don't produce engaged traffic eventually get blocked. I'm probly not the only one. Advertising costs have gone way way up, and people are smarter about controlling them now than they used to be.

That kind of user intent.

High rpm but huge decrease in page views with red bar ! Whats adsense Next step !

[edited by: C0DeZeR0 at 5:44 pm (utc) on Apr 27, 2016]

Based in Israel apparently but nothing online about their publishers or advertiser base.

I've been corresponding with them all morning. Their ads look exactly like content.ad ads. In fact, they use content.ad ads. They share 80/20 and payment net 30. I'm going to add them to my sites and see how it goes. If it makes ad blockers angry, then too bad. I don't want adblocker users at my sites anyway. With an ad blocker on, I saw examples of their ads at nowbuzzing.com and firsttoknow.com.

Seriously, what IS up with the pageviews today? They're way too low to be normal, must have something to do with the red bar.