I talk to people buying via adwords and they are 5-10$ a click

On the Display Network? Probably not.

If you look through their financials they only highlight marginal drops over like 2 years and yet since Jan my CPCs have dropped by 50%+ and others on here seem to suggest the same.

You're just a drop in the ocean; your individual CPCs have nothing to do with Google's overall financials. Also, it's perfectly normal for CPCs to drop in January; "November and December drive 30% more ecommerce revenue than non-holiday months" [rjmetrics.com ]. Indeed, my CPC is now roughly 70% of what it was in those months.

Look, it's a marketplace, there's supply (publishers), there's demand (advertisers), and then there's the middleman (Google) performing quality control. If your CPC keeps dropping, the demand (from advertisers) for your traffic or niche is decreasing or, in a similar vein, you're being smart priced (by the middleman) because your traffic isn't up to snuff. I think most of you are probably being smart priced, which basically means that traffic from other publishers converts better so CPCs are adjusted accordingly (or the better performing ads simply won't be shown).

But if you prefer to believe that Google is somehow cheating you, then that's your prerogative.

What I have never understood is why, if you really believe Google is stealing from you, do you continue to use them? Last summer I tested an ad network during my peak traffic that I absolutely believe stole at least a couple thousand dollars from me (Vertoz) and it would make your head spin how fast I took those ads off. And every time some new hire contacts me to re-join their network, I tell them no because I am convinced they STOLE from me. And I don't do business with companies I think are ripping me off, however large or small.

It is painful whenever a revenue source slows or dries up especially if it is the sole or a major stream.

With me, AdSense is a far third, being only on those (~10%) pages without other revenue; however, despite that, AdSense continues to perform well being similar or up slightly YoY for the past several including this just past and current. Despite this good news I keep expecting a decline for various reasons, some articulated below, and continue to build out alternatives and options. Nothing lasts forever, change is constant, and whatever happens usually picks the worst time...

Please remember: while it can be distressing to see income drop significantly especially if the MoM line is continually down it is a great mistake to take the specific, i.e. a particular site's behaviour, and extrapolate to the general, i.e. overall AdSense profitability direction for any other site or all other sites in aggregate (or for Google).

AdSense is not a monolith; some niches have seen advertisers decrease spend there as they test out other options, some advertisers have maintained spend but restricted it to search, additional publishers (especially in what are perceived to be higher value term niches) have come online every year, etc.

As always: it is not just you, not even just AdSense; but also your competitors and AdSense's competitors, your niche advertisers spend and allocation of spend and general advertising (thanks to retargeting, which I have a continuing hate-love-hate feeling about) spend and allocation. Plus ad and general script blocking niche audience take up. Plus whatever else.

Sorry to be that disgustingly distant cheerful ray of sunshine in an otherwise dreary thread, I do know the gut drop that accompanies revenue drop. But I really must ask: if it is bad and getting badder what are you planning to do about it?

I am not being facetious. There is an immediate critical business problem facing many including most in this thread that requires an urgent serious business-site specific analysis and solution strategy. Venting is good for short term stress relief but accomplishes nothing longer term so I truly hope you each and all are rigorously pursuing revenue recovery and continuity options.

Best wishes.

Seasonal changes lol. They have consistently paid me £1+ per click for 7 years in my financial niches. It has only been throughout 2016 that CPCs have hit the deck. This year we have also seen consistent poor targeting, the shaving bot issues, the spammy new SERP layout etc etc. As always, no transparency on problems and zero customer support. Sure, over the years we have all had bad days, but not several months of epic fail. Traffic is not the issue, have even managed to break records on some projects. On the financials issue, their data just doesn't compute. The difference between Cost-per-click on Google Network Members' websites is between -8 and -9 compared to a year back (small). Recent drops are huge.

They have consistently paid me £1+ per click for 7 years in my financial niches.

Plot twist: perhaps you've been overpaid all those years.

Honestly, I suspect most of us have, between the bots and the mobile fat finger clicks and the ginormous click fraud networks.

Wow you guys are still trying to find needles in a haystack with the current status of AdSense? Come on over to the Facebook Audience Network where I guarantee you that you will see better results. If you have a decent mobile-friendly site/app. If you don't have a good mobile-friendly site what are you thinking? You're toast in the long run without one. Actually, it's not the "long run" it's the present. Non mobile-friendly sites are as good as a foreclosure notice...yours' is coming - trust me.

My advice. If you are in it for the long haul, a good mobile-friendly site is essential. Now don't go telling me that CPC on mobile is 1/10 of desktop. I get it! But you know what? In less that a year or two tops, aside from people at work, NO ONE is using a desktop/laptop. I'm not wrong.

If you do have a mobile-friendly site/app why dear God aren't you using FAN?

That's all.

avalon37: I checked into the facebook network when somebody else here mentioned it. They seem to want you to design your own ads. No thanks. I like adsense's hands-off approach much better.

@avalon

Where do you place your FAN ads? Between content or end of content? How does your RPM of FAN compared to adsense?

Whelp with Adsense being to cornerstone of my online presence, I have only a short time left. It's sort of the icing on the cake. The difficulty with getting organic traffic, competing with top brands, and then seeing really terrible ad revenues. I never thought I would see the day when I would be even thinking that this venture couldn't cover expenses, but it sure happened in a real hurry. Affiliate incomes can and have been decent, but it's not a wise investment of time and energy from my perspective. Not sustainable I think is where I'm at. I'm close to torching most of what I do sadly.

Google is not stealing from you because it's not your money to begin with. Google is doing what all corporations do: leveraging the model so that it makes more and you make less. If it reaches a tipping point where you're not making enough, you should get out. Coming here and complaining might feel OK (that's why I do it...) but it won't help.

I've been somewhat insulated because while my RPM has plummeted, it's been partly offset by a significant increase in traffic. Plus I had income from other sources. But I can assure you that if things continue to slide, I'll drop Adsense like a hot potato.

Still playing with the Facebook Audience Network; so far the banners haven't done particularly well. They tell me native ads are better (of course) You don't have to design your own ad; there's some CSS they give you as far as the size (native ads only) that you can play with to make things fit nicely.

I scaled down the amount of ads I have per page now. I've only got one 300 x 600 ad units on one of my most popular articles and I received a nice single £2.28 click today. Be nice if I could get a few more of the same. I suppose it depends on what ad was showing and who and where they are clicked on it. My theory is that if I only have the one large unit per page, or two on the larger articles then are get more money per click. But that's just my theory, going to give it a month and see how much money I earn. However, in the last two days it's looking quite promising.

Last 3 days of the Pentecost/Whit Monday holiday, are significantly better than the ones last year. Very high US RPM for me right now.

In less that a year or two tops, aside from people at work, NO ONE is using a desktop/laptop. I'm not wrong.

I suspect that you are wrong, but in any case, "mobile-friendly" is a moving target as phone screens get bigger (with higher resolutions) and mobile connection speeds get faster. The typical "mobile-friendly" look of a year or two ago already looks dated on anything bigger than an iPhone 5.

In any case, having mobile-friendly pages is only half the battle: The bigger challenge is how to earn revenue from users who are using their phones while jogging, talking with their friends, or supervising their kids at the playground.

In less that a year or two tops, aside from people at work, NO ONE is using a desktop/laptop.

Yeah, only people at work. And high school students using laptops. And college students browsing when they should be typing essays or listening to lectures. And housewives and older people who find small screens and touch keyboards cumbersome. And Boomers like me who were raised on PCs. And people who can't afford large cell plans so rely on their home ISP. Apart from them, nobody will be using a desktop or laptop.

I suspect that people who spend a large amount of time at a computer will never give up their desktops. I'm one of those. The only time I use a laptop is when I'm away from home.

Yep! Head in the sand...

Weekend traffic was less than 30% desktop.

There will always be people that use desktops. I use a tube amplifier to listen to music. The point is the majority of users are already on mobile, and the share is growing.

So, I just checked my websites, and all of them are hovering between 16%-23% desktop traffic. Just for kicks, I looked at my desktop usage over the same period each year, and it's:

2013 - 44% desktop
2014 - 34% desktop
2015 - 30% desktop
2016 - 20% desktop

It's interesting how much it's declined. I don't agree with avalon37 though. I think there will always be some small segment that stays loyal to desktop browsing.

My breakdown this year is 71% desktop, 19% mobile and 10% tablet.

The question is not whether mobile is growing, it's whether mobile use of your site is growing, and if so, how fast. Not all of us have sites that are used in cars, shopping malls or at the beach.

It's interesting how much it's declined.

Has desktop usage declined, or has mobile usage increased? An increase in mobile traffic can be additional rather than cannibalizing on desktop usage. That's been the trend until recently.

I'm not wrong.

You're so wrong, I'm not even going to bother :-)

I've just checked the performance report between May 1, 2015 and May 1, 2016 and the figures are quite eye-opening. High-end mobile devices brought in 1,120,534 page views, 3,079,277 impressions, 13,080 clicks.

Now compare that to the desktop performance report. 413,847 page views, 1,063,927 impressions and 2640 clicks. I won't disclose the earnings, but let's put it this way, high-end mobile device earnings were three times as much as desktop.

As a matter of interest, tablets brought in 245,745 page views, 543,413 impressions, and 2188 clicks. Earnings were half of what the desktop brought in in the last 12 months.

So I think in my case it's vitally important my website is set up properly for mobile businesses and it comes to AdSense. But you can see now why my earnings have dropped dramatically, it seems that people who keep fish tend to use mobiles more than desktops to research. And a lot of people now use tapatalk on my forum.

Vignette ads are working extremely well. Finally, a way to increase mobile revenue with Adsense.
Seems like they took a few days to settle in. But now getting dollar plus clicks with Vignette ads.
Let them run at least one week and see what happens. One or two days is not enough time to test.

Desktop 87% today and growing in pageviews. It all depends on your content.

@kireb and @trebuchet are your sites mobile friendly?

My page views are off by a lot tonight 60% to 70% difference between GA and Adsense. Adsense is showing less than GA. Is anybody else seeing this?

In less that a year or two tops, aside from people at work, NO ONE is using a desktop/laptop. I'm not wrong.

No one? At all? It depends on your site. The majority of my users are older and do not like tiny screens. Can't see them and can't DO anything on them. Desktop is still my main money maker. Tablet RPM is very close second. Mobile has grown, but to say that no one will be using desktop in two years is a stretch.

@trebuchet are your sites mobile friendly?

They sure are. My sites are responsive and use media queries to load mobile ad units on mobile devices. My mobile SERPs are good too. It's just that my audience predominately uses desktops/laptops.

My page views are off by a lot tonight 60% to 70% difference between GA and Adsense.

My PVs went haywire halfway through the day. I dropped about 8,000 PVs and quite a bit of earnings in one hit. It seems to have restored itself now though.

Whereas a year ago I felt that desktop was losing share AdSense's metrics show not so much. I've not used January to March this year because of the inflated PVs issue.

1st April to 16th May 2015 desktop 67.41%

1st July to 31st December desktop 2015 66.34%

1st April to 16th May 2016 desktop 65.91%

May alone so far desktop 66.75%

Even though most of my sites are mobile and render extremely well, serious researchers would use desktop, even I don't bother looking for my trade stuff even though I have a 6" full HD smartphone.

I would certainly agree that serious researchers will still use desktop PCs when using the Internet. I can imagine that the people who use my websites do save from the comfort of their armchairs, or when lying in bed at night so the chances are they will just be using their smartphone. Looking at the performance report in the last day or two seems to confirm this quite clearly. In theory people who are still getting plenty of desktop browsing should still be earning quite well, although the money paid for each click will have probably dropped. I will almost certainly put my dramatic drop in earnings down to mobile activity.

I did try some of those mobile 320 x 100 ads on my website but I didn't get one single click. To be perfectly honest with you I think a standard 300 x 250 looks better on a mobile than one of these small mobile units.