With the month drawing near...here's some observations and future predictions.

RPM is roughly 10% lower than that of last month as expected. Which is inline relative to last year. I expect next month to get a 10~20% rise with summer coming into end with the back to school promotions and such.

Absolute abyss here, RPM is half the 18months average. I expect this kind of performance from August but July too?...Nothing to optimise Google have simply nothing to show they are not getting advertisers. Which makes these occasional Adsense suggestions "to optimise this and that and this too" even more annoying

Seeing lots of junk ads. "Click the button to get started" and download a toolbar you don't need. Block one URL and they come back with new URL (same ad). Like playing whack-a-mole.

Strange day, I've got a CPC of over $0.6 but my CTR still butt hole.

Copied from Ezoic the certified Google publishing partner:

"Seasonality alert: July is typically the lowest earning month of the year. This is due to changes in user behavior (people spend more time outside than inside on their computers during the summer months); this affects advertiser bids and budgets - with Q3 lower than any other quarter. You should expect to see incremental increases over the next several weeks, and revenue will return to normal in mid to late August. ......"

July is looking as though it's going to be one of my best months this year. Nothing to write home about, but at least my earnings are not dropping each month.

@NeapTide have you used Ezoic to optimize your Adsense ad placement?

July's always been good to me.

@nubchai yes. And it works.

I have observed that responsive ad units decrease revenue. I was using 300x250 ad unit above the fold (right below post title) which I removed after receiving warning. Switched to responsive and since that day, revenue is just declining. Now, I have done some tweak. Removed responsive ad unit and moved 300x250 ad unit right below the fold (a paragraph below the title) i.e. it appears when users start scrolling down. Now this ad unit has restored my page RPM somewhat.
From my understanding, most advertisers prefer larger ad units and ignore smaller ones. So when you switch to fixed large ad units (that are also compatible with mobile screens), your earning starts increasing.

@NeapTide - thanks!

Neaptide, doesn't Ezoic completely take over your site and place ads everywhere to the point that your layout is totally gone? That's what it looked like would happen when I talked to them.

You can choose where to place your ads. I have never tried their automated ad placement feature.

I'm not entirely sure why this has happened, however just looking at my platforms and things have changed dramatically in the last two or three weeks. So far this month I've had 51,000 impressions on the desktop, and 24,000 impressions on a tablet. However, I've earned just over £47 on the desktop, and just over £43 on the tablet. Mobile devices are still well ahead of just over £130 though. However, I've had over 178,000 impressions, 947 clicks on the mobile devices. So compared to 139 on the desktop, and 168 on a tablet, looks like desktops and tablets earn more money individually than mobile devices.

In fact, looking at the tablets, the page RPM is £4.92 and the impression RPM is £1.80, that's well ahead of desktop and mobile devices. This is the first month that I been using this new layout so hopefully things will keep on improving.

Looks like AdWords is running a special today.

50% off content network RPM :(

Was the "AdSense Earnings and Observations" thread ever this quiet? So anyway, comparing to 2015 where July was at a record low over the past 5-6 years, this year was barely any better. Traffic is stable, desktop RPM is improving, but my traffic is still switching aggressively to mobile, where RPM is about 60% of desktop. I'd hate to resort to more aggressive ads on mobile.

The payment is so low for at least half of year, that many searched for alternatives, others have close the shop.
Each month the same disturbing situation.
July was dead, August will be worse.

Ive seen this trend for years with others, but never to me in my 13 years with Adsense.

My RPM usually started very high once the hour crossed over to the new day and then gradually declined over 24 hours with a few minor bumps along the way.

Since the midway point of July, it starts off very low and then gradually goes up over the 24 period. But what hurts me is that the bulk of my traffic is from morning to afternoon, so once it's nightime, when RPM peaks for the day, I'm can't jump on that money.

On top of that, our social media accounts (facebook and twitter) are exploding. We are getting a ton of traffic from both (although still far below organic and direct traffic) and I believe Adsense is giving up a much lower RPM when we receive traffic from social media (as I've seen them do to many others). We are a new and information website, so our stories are passed around the social media corner even without posting it on our pages.

July turned out to be one of the best this year, well into the second portion of £xxx.

Let's hope August carries on like this

I wonder who wants to start an August thread? Anyone? :)

I don't have a good feeling for August... :(

July '16 is only 5% lower than in 2015. Clawback stands at 1%.
July is low season for me due to the school holidays, but turned out pretty good.

I thought it's starting to improve nicely - Jul 15% up over June... But 31 days vs 30 days and 8.45% clawback which is highest ever

I had an 89% clawback, that's not a typo. Eighty-nine. June was about 75, May, 35.

This is driving me crazy. I haven't been ably to track anything down just looking at Google Analytics. Is there any sort of filter, segment, whatever, I can use to make something seem more obvious in the stats?

ianevans: What was your average clawback before it started rising? How long has your account been active?

Do you have access to email support for adsense? If so you could contact them.

Do you think its related to click-bombing? 89 seems pretty high.

@ianevans

This high clawback usually pertains to invalid traffic from social media. If you are promoting your site on Facebook or similar, the traffic and clicks are not counted by Google. I would be a little worried if I were you, because in the past (years ago), Google has usually shut down accounts with such "problem" traffic.

Adsense on my main site for July is up 42% on July last year. Clawback is 1.8%.

RPM (page and impression) are both about 10% up. CTR is about 17% up.

@romerome and @ebuzz:

Don't have the exact numbers right in front of me as I write, but Jan-Mar we were looking at about 5 or 6 percent clawbacks. It's only May, June, July that's been crazy and it also coincides with a drop in traffic in those months.

Social according to GA was only about 1% of our traffic. 46% direct. 37 organic, 15% referral. Just looking at last month in detail and I see two spam referral sites totalling about 7%. That must be from info already there, as I have a huge list of spam referrer sites blocked in nginx.

Oh and I've been with Adsense for 13 years.

@ianevans

Is there any sort of filter, segment, whatever, I can use to make something seem more obvious in the stats?

In GA (assuming your adsense is linked to your GA account) click the Behaviour tab in the left side bar, then Publisher / Publisher Pages. This will show you how many clicks each pages has gotten. You could look to see if any pages had an abnormally high number of clicks.

Sorted by CTR, the 34th page had a CTR of 6.33. The 20th page had a CTR of 45%. The 1st page had a CTR of 300%.

How the heck do you get a CTR of 300%?

Can only be a malicious click bombing campaign. Even accidental clicks don't explain those figures.

I'm surprised Google didn't pick it up at the time though. I've had my share of click bombs but they're always wound back on the spot, not at the end of the month.