@Halaspike, the rev-share is about 50%...wished it was 68% not even mentioning 80%. Every 1% will be about 20 euros for me each month so that would be a nice raise ;-)

The reason I don't use link units is because they look too much like navigation. They contain keywords related to the page content, and likely related to what users are looking for, and I think many of them don't realize they're ads. I don't use media.net for the same reason.

@Halaspike, the rev-share is about 50%...wished it was 68%

It's always been 68% [support.google.com] for AdSense for Content.

I made my ad linnks look completely different from the regular navigation. An added advantage is that they are clearly labeled "Ad Choices." At least mine are.

It's the end of April... The first 10 days were bad ... the second 10 days were horrible .... the last 10 days were the recovery period.

In conclusion April 2017 was the worst month ever for me since I started with Adsense 8 months ago. I hope that nightmare will not happen again in May!

It seems as if Adsense is capping my revenue today. Regardless of the month, for the last seven months, I always end up with the same earnings. So today estimated earnings are terrible up to this point. I know people here have doubted that Adsense caps revenue, but it still feels like it's happening.

How many of you are either down on last year's earnings at this time, or have exceeded earnings that were on the same day last year? I've just checked my mum I'm £12 ahead of the same day last year. So even though this month is going to be quite a bit down on the last two or three months, at least it looks as though I'm on a fairly steady line.

Yeah there's no way my link ad could be confused with navigation options. Mine are labeled "Ad choices" too and are in the middle of my content. This is the second day this ad unit has been my top performer fwiw.

How big is this ad unit?

April started well and then after 2 days plummeted making the RPM the lowest in my 6 years with Adsense. On a positive note, the last week was pretty decent.

Earnings are down 30% compared to March and 8% down compared to April 2016. Especially the Easter break (was in March last year) impacted my earnings.

@ Ironside I'm using the 200x90

@Ironside i have exceeded the earnings of last year at this time by $60

@nubchai assume you are talking about the link unit, they actually do well because they tend to follow your niche and people do click on them. I've got a vertical link unit on another website that gets about 30 or 40 hits a day, however, I am earning about £30 a month of this website and 90% of this money comes from the link unit.

It will be interesting to see how may starts off. I'm tempted to have a little play around with the layout of my ad units. I think it's time for shuffle around.

@Ironside yes it's the link unit. I had one before above my post picture and it did so-so. But this one I place in the middle of the content and it attracts more clicks. You're right - the ads reflect the niche very well.

My clicks are down from last year, but my cpc is up. So it balanced itself out.

I ended slightly better then April 2016.

BUT... I'm still miles away from the golden years of 2014 and 2015. They were amazing.

Well April ended up having the worst cpc I have ever encountered in the more than 10 years I have been with Adsense, down by almost a third on this time last year. At the moment I am putting it down to being the start of a quarter, Easter and the bad press which adsense has had as clich thru rates are higher than ever. But will be interested to see if advertisers will start returning this month or whether they will hold out longer.

A must read: [themediaonline.co.za...]

I've found this article and it's exactly what I'm thinking about Adsense these days. To bad there's not a very good alternative. Google can fill all impressions even with bad quality banners. Other networks with good quality banners can't full all impressions.

Slightly better and into April that I was expecting. I hope this month carries on as it started today, of already have one click from a responsive ad on my home page which is worth £4.50, let's hope it stays. And my 300 x 600 has got a fairly high page and impression RPM already.

Media.net has been very mediocre all month, however yesterday finished off with the highest payment all month..

@runfun if your issue with Adsense is the appearance of spammy ads this can easily be solved.

I have used the ad balancer in conjunction with blocking certain specific sub-categories where these ads tend to appear, to eliminate nearly all these ads. I still do a daily ad review just to be sure. But it has been a while since I have seen any of these ads appear.

@Nick where are you checking for these ads? Surely if somebody from another country checks your website out they may see ads that you have never heard of?

@ironside I only check ads with ad-review center, feature in Adsense. It shows you all the ads that appear on your site, how often and on what day specifically.

If an ad appeared on your site it will be shown in ad-review center.

Nick, Do you adjust the ad balance on a daily basis? Also, here you're suggesting blocking underperforming categories, but didn't you suggest a few days ago blocking them will reduce competition and thus possibly lower revenue.

Another thing, I see ads blocked in the review centre that I didn't block myself, and they return to blocked status if I unblock them. Some of them are spammy but a few look like they would get decent click through if they were shown. Is this due to previously blocking categories which might have triggered their blocking in the first place.

To be honest with you, the quality of ads in the review centre do not seem all that high, so I am not surprised people are increasingly becoming blind to them? One look at the url of some of these ads suggest advertisers are just throwing them up in the hope of getting clicks at reasonably low cost. All the best ads appear in the search results. We publishers are usually getting the second and third tier.