The end of January is FUBAR!

This is bad luck for me, till now can't approve my adsense account.

January will remain in the lower of the range here. Hopefully it's compensated with my back up ads, which are now being served nearly half the time thanks to the ad balance feature.

I don't think my ad balance settings affected negatively my incomes, because the CTR is slightly up, it's the CPC which is very bad this month.

I don't put get thrilled or depressed by single-day stats. For example, our RPM today is running almost twice what it was yesterday, but that's probably just an anomaly. The numbers smooth out quite a bit when they're averaged over a month.

I don't focus on single day stats either, but my RPM is also considerably higher today (so far, at least) than it has been at any point this January.

@EditorialGuy and Cralamarre also intraday RPM is not accurate, as a few clicks early in the day will push the value way up, then the figure will come back down to normal as the day rolls on and more people few pages without clicking. Daily RPM is only reliable from the previous day.

For the full explanation read my post #4832790 on page 3 of this thread.

Seeing some RPM improvement on week over week basis for the last 5 days. Maybe end of month is playing a factor.

I think most posters here are experienced enough to know that RPM fluctuates over the course of a day. Whether you look at individual days, groups of days or the month as a whole, January's RPM is rubbish. Not even a massive final day will save it.

I think most posters here are experienced enough to know that RPM fluctuates over the course of a day. Whether you look at individual days, groups of days or the month as a whole, January's RPM is rubbish.

In looking at January as a whole, I see nothing to complain about. We're certainly doing a lot better than we did in November and December, which is always a dead time of year for our topic.

As a bonus, the new Ad Balance slider is letting us earn revenue from impressions that were going to waste until a few weeks ago.

Which ad units are performing well for people this month? My best performing ads have been 300 x 600 for quite a while now. Either placed to the left of the content, or embedded within content, both do quite well. I have a 336 x 280 non-responsive unit that seems to do quite well as well. Anything placed beneath the heading doesn't really generate much income whatsoever.

Looks as though January will be slightly down to what I got in December, but certainly nothing to get upset about.

For me, this month will go down in the history books as the worst AdSense month in many years. Last weekend was the biggest disaster, with two days of the lowest earnings I've ever seen.

However, surprisingly, my earnings yesterday were up 43% from the same day last week, and today is, so far at least, looking promising. Maybe there's some hope going into February.

Ironside: When I implemented 300 x 600 ad units, they outperformed everything else that I'd used, so I haven't tried anything else. They're still doing extremely well on our site. (FWIW, we don't run AdSense ads on mobile pages.)

@Editorial guy - does most of your traffic come from desktop then? If I stopped ads on mobile then I think I would more than half the amount of money I get from AdSense. Whenever I check live statistics and analytics there are more people browsing my site from a mobile and desktop or tablets, is very very rare that I see desktop before mobile. But I think that's down to my niche, I can imagine that people are probably sitting on the sofa watching television whilst looking for information.

My platform break down is as followed for month of January in terms of $ earned.

60% Mobile - from 63% of overall pv's served
22% Tablet - from 16% of overall pv's served
18% Desktop - from 21% of overall pv's served

My niche is heavy mobile. I started designing my pages around mobile only roughly an year back after noticing the initial shifts early on against my audiences habits.

For comparison's sake.

2016 January
50% Mobile
28% Tablet
22% Desktop

I am anticipating further loss of desktop traffic in my niche for the next year or so. Perhaps 15% desktop by this year end. and 10% by the end of next year.

does most of your traffic come from desktop then? If I stopped ads on mobile then I think I would more than half the amount of money I get from AdSense.

Desktop is about half, while mobile and tablet traffic (especially mobile) together make up the other half. But whenever I've put AdSense ads on mobile pages, the earnings haven't been enough to get excited about, so I use small house ads that promote our main revenue source (an affiliate program).

Compared to January 2016:

RPM identical
Page Views up 15%
Earnings up 15%

Breakdown per platform January 2017:
Desktop 85% (was 86% in 2016)
Mobile 9% (was 9%)
Tablet 6% (was 5%)

Read 'em and weep.

January 2017 vs January 2016
Pageviews up 24%
Clicks up 32%
RPM down 27%
Earnings down 5%

For me and my major site (approximate to 5%) figures are:

January 2017 vs January 2016
Pageviews up 85%
Clicks up 95%
Page RPM up 5%
Earnings up 95%

Given the Page RPM has remained almost static, the increase is purely down to the increase in pageviews which has caused an increase in clicks and earnings by almost the same degree.

My secondary sites have continued to decline by all the stats but I gave up on them three years or so ago and just leave them to earn a few pennies now.

UK Informational

trebuchet: Has your ratio of desktop-to-mobile traffic changed since January, 2016? Could that be a factor in your year-over-year RPM and earnings decline?

As of yesterday I noticed that on my mobile ads every time someone clicks on one it says "visit site" and makes you click on it again before visiting the ad site. Has this happened to anyone before? Please let me know

trebuchet: Has your ratio of desktop-to-mobile traffic changed since January, 2016? Could that be a factor in your year-over-year RPM and earnings decline?

No, that's not it. My split between desktop and tablet/mobile has scarcely changed in the last 12 months.

@Grapetimes : Yes i have noticed exactly the same thing on several blogs i run, plus almost every site that has paginated posts. Everybody now gets "visit site" arrow. I think it has to do with their effort to reduce accidental clicks. Hate to say this, but this was to be expected. The worst thing is that my fallback options (other networks) have started implementing this as well.
I cannot offer any advice but i can share that i have noticed that in past 3 days sidebar banners work better than the text inline placements. Also, not every site is affected so i guess, and i hope that you guys have no clue what i`m talking about.

Occasionally I'll carry out an experiment with a friend in the US. I'll get them to run through the pages on my website and make a note of what AdSense advertising is being displayed to them. I think you'd be rather surprised at what the results are. If anyone wants me to take a quick look at their website and go through the pages and jot down what I am seeing then please drop me a PM. Maybe you could do the same for me if you're in the US.

Sidebar banners are definitely the biggest ad for me, they have been for quite a long time now. I actually use a 300 x 600 on every article now. I put one in the sidebar, but I also embed one within the text on the longer articles.