"Product Update: We’re launching a new, modern look for your text and link unit ads! The new look introduces a minimalist design that brings the focus back on the text content. You’ll start seeing the new look for some of your impressions soon."

^ This has to be it. I looked at the initial post for this change and it was on (drum roll) Sept. 30th. I guess we are all the lucky guinea pigs who got to test out these new awful changes.

I can only hope that when everyone else see the changes, the backlash is severe enough that G does a 180 and puts things back to the way they were.

@WMaster99: Interesting post. I have also been with AdSense for more than 10 years, and I have never seen earnings this low before.

I did the same calculations as you, and here are my numbers:

September (9/1-9/29) = 100% of RPM
Jan-Aug (1/1-8/31) = 83% of RPM
10/1 = 53%
10/2 = 58%
10/3 = 53%
10/4 = 48%
10/5 = 44%

Important note: My numbers are actually worse. When this problem started (actually at the end of September for me), I noticed a very poor fill rate. For those who do not know, go to "Revenue profile" and you will see "Coverage" which is the same as fill rate. Usually I am at 98-99%. But when this problem started I was down to around 90% only. And among the 90% are very many crappy ads, and ads for "Google Chrome download" and "AdWords trial". What I then did was to detect when there is no fill and then disable ads for those sessions (can be done by having AdSense calling a specific URL on your server in the Backup ads section, and then do some server side programming to discontinue ads for those sessions). So... if I had not done this, the above figures would have been even worse. On the other hand, I do get less page views with ads now.

I don't know, I'm seeing the same text ads as you but my rpm has been up as of late. The only down day I had was 10/2.

They make a big change and make sure it goes out on the 1st of the quarter and blame it on the quarter...Same thing happened in 1st of April!

Epc is down a little this month but I attribute that to it being October. Ctr is actually up with these new text ads.

Response from Adsense:

Since CTR measures your clickthrough rate, it makes complete since that it would decline as your traffic declines. Less visitors = fewer clicks = lower CTR.

My thoughts:

Are you serious? Our traffic did not decrease THAT much since last week. We are talking about 2 -3% and we get tens of thousands of visitors every day. And why don't you Google the definition for CTR?

"The simplest definition is that click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your ad after seeing your ad. (In mathematical terms: CTR = Clicks/Impressions.)"

Yes, you read it correctly CTR = percentage of people who click on your ad AFTER seeing your ad. It has nothing to do with you just getting a little less traffic!

We talk about October and the adsense staff gives us a screenshot for 1+ year and tell us some generic BS (sending us to their FAQ). They do not even realize there is a freaking general problem with the color schemes! Just asking us to provide them with the ad unit id, screenshot and placement url after we described the problem to them!

We've been with adsense for 10+ years and this is the #*$! we have to deal with. We had a personal rep before, but after our income declined last year we lost that contact and have to deal with the generic support. I guess we got under the threshold.

I am so frustrated right now... Adsense, can I please get someone more qualified to talk to? We are not new to the game you know?!?!

I got the same general faq anwser , really frustrated also..
Dont know what to do ?

stateofmind,

I can not even see coverage. I get "We don't have enough data to show your revenue profile right now. Please check back again as your traffic grows". There is a drop down with two periods to check, I get the same error on both.

As our traffic grows? We got plenty of traffic, but we got no coverage stats! Is that normal?

[edited by: Maximum44 at 7:37 am (utc) on Oct 6, 2016]

gogs25,

Unfortunately there is not much we can do at this point. Especially since we have no answers. This reminds me too much of when the Nessie arrows dissapeared in April. That was a design change based on invalid clicks. It was figured out eventually.

Now we have a new design with an inability to match colors they way we are used to (match title, links etc). But we are also in the beginning of a quarter, just like last time! It might just be low inventory. I guess we have to wait and hope someone figures it out like last time. It helps when you have a dedicated rep to talk to. Then you get more than BS answers.

@Maximum44: Regarding "Coverage", I don't know how much traffic one needs. In my case, I have around 3 million page views per day.

stateofmind,

Around 100k a day here, so significantly less. You would think it should be enough. Guess not! :D

You guys who are getting 100,000, up to 3 million page views a day must still be into the hundreds of dollars a day bracket. I'm lucky if I get 10,000 page views a day. My earnings used to be into double figures every day, now I get a few double-figure days, but mostly single figures.

@Maximum44

Since CTR measures your clickthrough rate, it makes complete since that it would decline as your traffic declines. Less visitors = fewer clicks = lower CTR.

Click through rate is the percentage of the number of visitors clicking it is measured per 100 visitors so a 1% CTR indicates that 1 visitor in 100 clicks the ad (not dependent on the number of visitors at all - though variability of click through rate will increase with lower numbers of visitors)

My CTR is down with these new ads - and possibly also some changes I made at the end of September, just unlucky that the two coincided and I can't tell exactly what is the cause. I started reading this thread to see if other people were experiencing the same thing - and there are some, but not all - to try and work out whether my changes were the real cause of the issues I am seeing.

IanTurner, Correct, that would describe CTR.

I am well aware that if you have very little traffic, CTR can be difficult to messure accurately, but with 100 000 pageviews a day a few percentage increase / decrease in traffic is not relating to an overall CTR drop of 30%. You would think the adsense rep would understand this! It is either very low inventory or the new ad style is really messing things up! Maybe a combo of the two! Who knows. Something is different, thats for sure!

I have noticed the drop is mainly for text and rich media ads. Image ads seems to be somewhat unaffected!

I know it's easy to blame new ad styles for drop in earnings, however I don't see how that can have an effect. You're relying on real people to click on your ads. If the ad is showing something interesting then I don't see how the colour is going to make much difference. You can go to any number of websites, small ones, really big well-known websites and the ads that are displaying are basically all the same. I can go to some of these sites and they are showing ads related to my Internet history. A lot of the websites are showing adverts for Goldsmiths jewellery store and also a website called catawiki. Basically, I visit this website occasionally and now I get bombarded with their ads on nearly every website I visit. In the evening my website gets plagued by host Gator ads. However, I would imagine that other guests to my website I'm not seeing the same, they are probably seeing ads related to their own search history.

And if somebody who uses the Internet a lot is getting served up the same ads on every website they visit, it's no wonder the click through rate is low.

Yes it is possible that they are experimenting with the remarketing parameters too. It is particularly irritating too get ads constantly from a site where you actually went and purchased the item - then getting bombarded by their ads is exceptionally stupid.

It looks like they take visitor IP lists from the site and don't clean out the visitor purchased/completed IPs.

Also we are now in the run up to Christmas - a time when many people are buying presents for members of the family that live in the same house - remarketing to IP is particularly annoying in this case when your partner sees ads for the jewellery/shoe/weekend break site you've looked at for their Christmas present!

I played a lot with text coloring over the years, and the best result was always to blend the ads so they look similar to the rest of the website. Now it does not blend that well anymore. We even have to deal with a big line that was not there before.

Last time there was a design change CTRs dropped as well. So yes, it is something i am thinking about. :D

I know it's easy to blame new ad styles for drop in earnings

So, what do you propose as to why so many are seeing revenue drops starting on the same day?

What's going on?

I think Google would say "If you don't Like the New Text Ads we will get someone that does"

Google's is concerned about its bottom line, not yours.

(I actually like the way they look, I just haven't seen them on my sites yet)

Edit - I take that back, I see them this morning. The ads on my white-backgrounded sites look fine. The ones on the dark background sites - the circle and arrow are kind of weird and jaggy.

@Ian I totally agree with your statement on on-line Christmas shopping. I instructed my wife to use duckduckgo to search for Christmas gifts when she uses the our shared Ipad.

@Edge there is a whole universe of factor can negatively impact CTR. As I mentioned already, I am seeing the new ad format on my site and my CTR is on the high end of the spectrum. Now I don't use custom colors. I can see colors having an impact but I would be very surprised if is in the order of magnitude of what is being discussed.

With all the flux going on in the serps right now, I would speculate that the cause has more to do with the quality of the traffic coming to your site. You may be getting a new set of users, ones that are less likely to click on ads.

Regardless, comparing daily metrics from a few days with a long run average (over a few month) is bound to lead you erroneous conclusion. Making any changes now be dangerous, because you will have no way of determining if any future fluctuations are the result of your changes or of ongoing volatility.

Something is obviously happened which has had a drastic effect on our earnings. I simply do not believe it's got much to do with what the ads look like. At the end of the day a slight change in colour, an arrow disappearing is not going to half someone's earnings because people browsing your website will still see the ads. If one of the ads looks interesting then I think they will click whatever the colour or style.

I'm still convinced that the massive increase in mobile use has had the most effect on earnings. I think people who browse the website for a mobile device probably don't pay much attention to ads like they used to. In the days of desktop use only, you would probably sit there for a while reading without even scrolling up or down, an advert would probably then more likely catch your attention.

@Ironside, I agree mobile has played a big roll in it. If I look back at my strongest months, they all have been months where mobile has accounted for a larger part of the revenue mix.

If you can get mobile users to click on ads at the same rate as your desktop users, you would be doing just fine.

@Edge, and @Maximum44, have you see an increase in the number mobile users? How about a shift in revenue from mobile users?

I saw a massive change in activity in a very short time. When I was earning nearly 700 quid a month, that was nearly all from desktop. However, the change from desktop to mobile activity was really quick and for me particularly, that showed in my earnings.

My numbers:

September (9/1-9/29) = 100% of RPM
9/30 = 78%
10/1 = 58%
10/2 = 66%
10/3 = 61%
10/4 = 67%
10/5 = 59%
10/6 = 60%

NickMNS, there has been virtually no change in percentage of mobile users. About 5% shift from desktop to mobile earnings.

My sites cater to desktop only (mobile is < 5% of my visitors) and I'm still seeing HUGE drops in earnings that are definitely not normal fluctuation so I don't think mobile is the cause.

I agree on the ads changing thing. This isn't just because a color changed. These drops are so big that my RPMs are the worst they've been in 10 years. That's not because Google put an arrow on an ad.

@WMaster99 how come you have such a small percentage of mobile visitors? Nobody can control what device someone uses to visit their website can they?

I run a large network of flash game sites. You can't play flash games on a lot of mobile devices. It's more of a desktop thing because you need the keyboard or mouse to play.

With all the flux going on in the serps right now, I would speculate that the cause has more to do with the quality of the traffic coming to your site. You may be getting a new set of users, ones that are less likely to click on ads.

Yes, you're speculating on a site that you have no knowledge of in any form.. After 16+ years running this site I can assure you that my 2.2 million monthly uniques did not collectively start clicking on lower CPM ads on Sept. 30.. .

Google has flipped a switch that is affecting a large swath of AdSense publishers.. There is a common trigger or set point..

Looking at my site, it ~ seems to me that the ad verticals have changed as well as the relative CPC being paid.. I'm getting hotel and other low CPC, CPM ads on a site that has nothing to do with travel. Google might be saving the higher paying ads for themselves..