@Ironside, I've been myself considering sine a long time to get ride of my 728 x 90 banner because it was earning barely nothing, but I've been so busy with more "important" things for my site, that I never touched this banner. However, this month, for an "unexplained" reason (so we shouldn't make conclusions, I think) it's performing great.

As for the location, it's ultra boring-traditional-old-school, it's simply on top of the page, in the middle.

(My 300x600 is on top of the right side column).

@Dmitri thanks for the tip about the banner, might try a couple again. Here's a tip for you regarding the 300 x 600, move it to the left-hand column and see how it performs. About 90% of my earnings come from my 300 x 600 banner, one of which is placed in the left-hand column. The other one I have embedded within a paragraph of text on a few of my articles.

Earnings are just so sporadic. You get 1 great day of hope, then it's in the mud.

For the last month or so things are been on an even keel. I had the odd blip but I was quite happy with the way things were going. However, in the last couple of days earnings have really dropped for some reason. Yesterday was slightly better than the previous day or two, today looks like it may prove slightly as well, but will have to wait and see.

Please check your Coverage on US.

Here is mine...
[i.imgur.com...]

The problem is ONLY for US visitors!

One thing to keep in mind is that you will see sharp declines in coverage when extensively using the Ad review center to block ads, and/or the Ad Balancer.

That said, I saw a 15% decline in coverage between Feb 11 - 14, and it has slowly been trending upwards since. I wasn't blocking any ads or using the Ad Balancer when I experienced this anomaly.

[edited by: Pistoche at 9:34 am (utc) on Feb 17, 2017]

Sorry for the silly question, how do you see the "coverage" ?

You could see coverage by going to "Performance Reports" and then choosing any type of report such as "Default Report". Next, click the "Custom" tab, and "Coverage" should be one of the options. Thereafter, you could filter by country or other categories if you prefer.

Thank you @Pistoche , I don't know what I am doing wrong, but I can't find the "coverage" data...

By the way, i said it some times ago, but I suspect there is something wrong with the text ads too. Until January 25th, my Active View Viewable for text ads was 60%, then on January 25 it went 30%, then on February 7th it went bellow 15%. All other type of ads (image, rich medias...) remain constant (around 60%-70%).

@Dimitri maybe this will help:

Step 1:
[imgur.com...]

Step 2:
[imgur.com...]

Step 3:
[imgur.com...]

As for the text ads issue, I'm not sure what could be causing that. I'll brainstorm some ideas and get back to you if I think of anything. Perhaps it has to do with the 2-click ad confirmation on mobile? Can you check if Active View Viewable on text ads differs between different platforms?

Thank you Pistoche ! I feel so stupid. I already had a "custom" tab, but it was empty, and it was not proposing me to add metrics, in fact, I had to "delete" my empty custom tab, in order to create a new one with this metric :">

Okay, so, on my side, I also see a significant decrease of coverage, but NOT for the USA. My USA metrics are rather constant around 95% (my site targets English speaking countries, so USA represents a huge part of my traffic). My decrease of coverage is from all the other countries, but it might be related to the ad balance feature , I don't know how both are working together.

As for the text-ads, this is on desktop that the active view viewable collapsed for me. Some times ago, using the console tool, it was reporting javascript error about these ads, but I am no longer seeing these errors.

For the coverage decrease, I have seen it go lower due to blocking ads from ad review center and also from using the ad balancer. So I am pretty sure it is due to the ad balancer in your case and it isn't anything to worry about.

As for the Active View Viewable and javascript error, I am not sure what the problem could be, did you get HTTPS recently? That's pretty much the only thing I can think of.

And before we derail this thread too much: my CPC has once again dropped in the days since Valentines Day by around 15%. Looks like we're back on the up and down rollercoaster ride known as Adsense.

Valentine's Day was terrible, however the last two days have slowly improved of each day earning slightly more than the previous. However, I am sure that most of you will agree that predicting what earnings will come from Google is a waste of time nowadays.

Media.net on the other hand has been very stable and even though it doesn't bring in as much as AdSense, it's certainly nowhere near as sporadic. I certainly would never get rid of media.net, it can only get better.

I am sure that most of you will agree that predicting what earnings will come from Google is a waste of time nowadays.

Try predicting this for my sites yesterday.

Highest day since 18th July 2015
Earnings 277% v February daily average
One site delivered 87% of earnings
Of those earnings split 71.5% v 28.5% US v UK
For that site CTR 12.2%

Obviously I have absolutely no idea what ad created such interest other than the clicks did not appear all in one go, they were steady throughout the afternoon and evening.

That site has been around since 1998 and is updated every Sunday, nothing extra or special has been done recently however its earnings have been slowly on the increase.

Following the suggestion of Ironside, I moved my 300x600 from the right to the left of the page, and I noticed that this is not the same ads showing. I am randomly testing a left and right column, and this is different ads showing. I am using the same ad code, so it's not a matter of being seen as different ad slots, and the ad code is inserted exactly at the same position in the HTML code (the position is only a change at the CSS level). Also, from a vertical point of view, it's still at the same position in the page.

So I assume that, the "horizontal" position of an ad slot, is also a criteria in the selection of ads being shown.

* I know that using the same ad slot, will not tell me which position performs the best, but right now, I am at the point of testing the "cosmetic" appearance of my page layout.

How does the 300 by 600 appear on mobile?

Personalty, I am displaying 300x600 only on desktop; on mobile, I display a 300x250 at the end of the content.

@Dimitri the drop in coverage is absolutely related to the ad-balancer. The coverage varies somewhat but the figure should be close to what you have set. If you have different sites, then the ad-balancer could be reducing your coverage on one site while leaving you near full coverage on another. But if you are looking at the entire account report it should reflect the ad-balancer setting.

Today, Saturday, the payment is in the toilet again.

Seeing a new RPM high for the year to date. Roughly 10% higher than this month's average. I am not using ad balancer so it's not a result of that, but rather advertiser change.

Hey everyone. Long time lurker, but the poor performance on Adsense the last two months have caused me to seek some help.

Here are my stats for the last 28 days:

145,000 page views
Page RPM $0.65 (HORRIBLE, for the past two years I usually averaged around $1.50)
Impressions 202K
CPC $0.10
Page CTR 0.64%

These numbers are awful. A site earning 145K page views should easily make north of $100 during that period, and I am way under. I was earning around $150/month with similar traffic in Oct/Nov and things have plummeted of late. Any ideas?

I AM using the ad balance feature for the last month or so, but it hasn't made much of a difference. I am running about the same numbers as I was in January, without ad balance, when numbers plummeted.

For Adsense, I run a responsive ad at the very top of the page next to the site logo, a responsive ad in the middle of each text post, and a 336x280 at the end of each post.

I've added outbrain over the last week to try to supplement income, which now appears under my last Adsense ad (336x280) on each page. I also run Insticator in the right menu and have for several months, which has been earning decent revenue. I was using Insticator during my best months with Adsense as well, so I don't think that's driving anything downward.

Thanks for any help!

[edited by: rdros23 at 10:57 pm (utc) on Feb 19, 2017]

Hi rdros23 , if you've been long time lurker, you should know you can't post your site URL.

By the way, did you see a change at the CTR level ?

Noted, I have removed the link.

My CTR has been up and down but far higher than in October when I earned approx $150 for the month.

I had 120K page views in October, RPM $1.20, 212K impressions, CPC $0.15, and CTR of 0.29%.

Contrast with January. 135K page views, RPM $0.63, 164 K impressions, CPC $0.08, and CTR of 0.50%. $78.82 total revenue.

Over the last 30 days, 150K page views, RPM $0.64, 215K impressions, CPC $0.08 and CTR of 0.56%. $89.68 total revenue.

This is why I'm so confused as to why I'm presently earning about 1/2 the revenue.

I also noticed a significant decrease of the CPC since the beginning of January, while other metrics are remaining the same, or sightly higher. I never observed this since I started using Adsense (6 years ago). I am not sure what can be causing it. Since CPC remains in the a similar range, I assume that ads are still pertinent.

Should we have a red bar today?

My clicks have not budged since this morning UK time i.e. 7-8 hours ago.

Anyone else?

Things are pretty slow for me as well in the UK, I was wondering whether something had slowed down

The first 14 days of Feb were good, in fact I have had a good 5 months, but since the 15th cpc has been crucified with earnings a third of what they had been despite the same amount of traffic and clicks. I can pinpoint the problem further as it is the cpc on American clicks which has been destroyed as everywhere else the cpc has been consistent the entire month. On top of that I am also seeing immediate clawbacks with what seems to be any click giving me what I was earning during the first half of the month being removed within minutes.

The last time earnings plummeted mid month it was poor for 10 days only returning to normal towards what I would call the end of month pay day zone which I am really hoping will be the case this time.

Until now (20:40 GMT) our CPC is 25% less then usual Monday CPC (this year).

@whyohwhy I'm seeing the EXACT same thing, perhaps we're in the same niche. One can only hope things pick up soon.

Yesterday and today are the worst 2 days of this month so far.