Down 50%+ also since sunday - no change in traffic profile, and affiliate sales doing better than ever... so its clear that its not a traffic issue

so its clear that its not a traffic issue

However could it be a change in the type of traffic with it being a holiday in the US?

Just speculating.

Things can drop a bit on holidays - but its not only US traffic - and well over 100k page views a day. Things dont drop 60% thats nearly always some traffic or google issue - i think its the latter this time.

Worth also mentioning that ads.txt is correctly in place, the site has been checked and passes the new chrome standards, and coverage is around 95% - so its none of those possibilities either.

No recovery here, highest pageviews day yet low earnings. Sigh :(

I am not accusing anyone of not complying with their contracted 68% or whatever it is... My point is simply that in this industry there is not true transparency. And not much oversight.

If I said I was going to take a proportion of your income, but that you would just have to trust me on how much I will be taking....and on how much your full income in the first place you would laugh me out of town.

My other point was just that our shop,too, had a sudden drop, and no recovery. I too am happy for those who are aok... But several of us are not...that is all.

Did somebody try to turn off ad serving from so-called "Google certified ad networks"?

Yesterday was another great day for us CPC and Rpm are up. Traffic similar to December, although in January we lost traffic due to Facebook changes.

CPC and Rpm are up

From what? 0.1?

Those who are supposedly "up" never provide any precise details. Strange, isn't it?
Looks like either traffic hunters having temporary luck or newcomers, considering +50 in traffic and +2$ in income worth celebrating.

0.1? that would be terrible :(

During November and December, we had an average rpm of $7 that fell to under 4 on 1st January although it slowly recovered, Facebook made changes, our traffic changed. Begining of February rpm and cpc dropped again, I can see a steady climb now as it stands at cpc $0.40 and rpm $5.8. Not sure if I am allowed to share this info. Btw this is not Adsense but Adx.

Thanks for clarification. I suppose you're talking about US traffic.
I have almost the same figures and consider them as terrible anyway.
Now it's more clear what do you mean, saying "up".

Well yeah, it can only get better :)

@sdksjdksjd

Well, no one else has the balls to ask you!

Why are you SO aggressive to everyone and everthing?

I don't have any issue with your questions however you seem to portray that you know the answer to everything without actually posting any solutions.

So, come on, tell us all what we are ALL doing wrong whereas you are doing so right ... please:-)))

And condescension will not be taken lighlty.

@sdksjdksjd not sure messing with adsense settings will do anything... since for me at least nothing changed on my end and my rpm still fell.. For a while i tried to fine tune everything I could on my end with no results.

@frankleeceo we are in a low dollar niche/with high volume. Our RPM went from $1.15 in early January...where it has been, stable, for about the last seven years to ~ .45-.55.

@RedBar
Not aggressive, but straightforward.
This is IT business - precise stuff, where variables do matter. I don't know how to find solutions, based on vague info in this business. Do you?
And why would anyone ask questions here, having solutions? Sorry, but I don't follow your logic.

@kegnum
Noted. Thanks.
I just see some strange titles of the networks in the list, like "Do Not Use" and "0".
Probably Google certifies these networks, paying a little attention to increase the market share and as the result we get the crap ads. I remember not far ago I saw much less networks in the list and now there are 3000+ titles. Looks like every ad agency on the Planet is welcome to use our webproperty for pennies.
Just thoughts.

@sdksjdksjd one thing I am trying is blocking categories that are performing terribly... for example a sub category that makes up 1.5% of my traffic but only .2% of my earnings.. my guess is this will do nothing.. but i am testing it out now

@kegnum
Thanks for the info.

Those who are supposedly "up" never provide any precise details. Strange, isn't it?

Earnings and traffic up by 50% since early January.

Looks like either traffic hunters having temporary luck or newcomers, considering +50 in traffic and +2$ in income worth celebrating.

No idea what a traffic hunter is.

Looks like every ad agency on the Planet is welcome to use our webproperty for pennies.

You are welcome to stop using Adsense at any time.

Why are you SO aggressive to everyone and everthing?

Thank you.

@Unshiny

Thanks for the additional information. The timing does seem off for a end of january RPM drop. Let me get this right, you get an year end drop from Q4 into Q1, and got hit another time again in January? Or your niche does not usually suffer from seasonal RPM shifts? In terms of my niche generally, I do get a -50% RPM hit going from Q4 into the new year. I am seeing light campaigns for both valentine's day and president's days as well, and still no obvious RPM recovery trend.

I mostly operate in low RPM niches like you, I have been expanding my verticals to diversify as much as I can, but the big chunk of my earning is still from low RPM traffic. So I know a little bit of both worlds.

I do see volatile RPM's during this quarter with sites ranging +/- 20% daily rpm's in terms of individual sites. But 50% drop on the average does hurt. I personally try not to do drastic changes during this period to ride out the volatile waves, but a 50% drop might not simply due to volatility.

If I remember right, someone on this board found success in recreating and replacing ad codes to address sudden RPM drops noted by you. I don't know if this works because I did not do this personally.

It should be noted that there have been quite a bit of advertisers shifts during recent months, behavioral changes one might say in terms of bidding and allocating advertising dollars into other platforms. It could well be that a heavy paying advertisers put your site on their blacklist (you will not know or have access to this information), which cause the overall bidding to crash. Do you serve any "gray" area kind of content?

I speculate this because adsense does have page level violations which allow certain advertisers to stop serving or bidding inventories for certain URL's, perhaps they can go further on a domain level. And your RPM crash seems to coincide roughly with adsense's "brand safety" push this past 2 months. (Where many others were having issues with site architecture / crawler access).

In terms of executable actions, I am a big proponent on viewability. Is your visitors shifting to mobile site which causes ads to be seen less often? That might be an area that I would personally explore and be able to act on.

[edited by: frankleeceo at 2:44 am (utc) on Feb 20, 2018]

traffic up by 50% since early January

Then you either have a very little traffic or not SE traffic. There were no major SERP changes since early January to gain 50% of SE traffic.
In both cases your experience is barely valuable, since most of the people, having probs, manage big amount of SE traffic.
Anyway, glad to hear at least somebody is happy with modern Adsense.

@sdksjdksjd,

You do not need major SERP changes to experience major traffic changes for individual sites. I doubt that any of us are operating alexa top 1000.

What is your account size anyways, monthly earning or monthly pageviews? It's hard to take you seriously when you are around blowing people off without sharing a bit about yourself.

If I remember right, someone on this board found success in recreating and replacing ad codes to address sudden RPM drops noted by you. I don't know if this works because I did not do this personally.

It always worked, but for a few days only.

It could well be that a heavy paying advertisers put your site on their blacklist (you will not know or have access to this information), which cause the overall bidding to crash. Do you serve any "gray" area kind of content?

Not possible. Too many websites got probs in the same period of time.

You do not need major SERP changes to experience major traffic changes for individual sites.

Sure you do. Website with broad traffic can't gain 50% without major SERP shift.
Extremely narrow niche website, like "Valentines cards" for ex., can gain 50% in certain days, but this is very unique case can't help others here.

After December decrease I manage 800k monthly pageviews. Highly targeted SE traffic.

Then you either have a very little traffic or not SE traffic. There were no major SERP changes since early January to gain 50% of SE traffic. 
In both cases your experience is barely valuable, since most of the people, having probs, manage big amount of SE traffic.

I've said before that I do not have the traffic volumes that other sites have. Traffic has increased that much because December and early January are our slowest times and February and March are our highest, thanks to our niche. My sites provide a nice living, so I think my experience is valuable.

After December decrease I manage 800k monthly pageviews. Highly targeted SE traffic.

It makes no difference how many pageviews you manage. What matters is how much money you make.

It makes no difference how many pageviews you manage.

It sure makes difference, since all this business is about pageviews. Majority of online businesses are un-profitable, but do have value. Just to mention Twitter or Quora.
It was clear, that you're traffic hunter. It's not bad. It's just another business.

Anyway, I'm close to million in overall income.

@sdksjdksjd

Have you been operating the site for a long time? Has the RPM been consistent throughout the years until the recent drops in this late January?

My personal breakout sites have mostly been created in the past 2~3 years, and I do not have the RPM anywhere near your levels. This is assuming 800k pageview to close to million of overall income, that's insanely high in my book. My speculation is that there might have been legacy bids by certain advertisers, for sites that have been operating for a long time, they just never removed / adjusted those bids. And during the recent clean house, they "reset" the rates and made them closer to the new sites created during more recent times.

The end result is the the "newer" sites see no RPM changes, while the legacy "aged" sites see a normalized RPM to the low side. We do know and observe that "different" adsense accounts sometimes earn slightly different rates, anecdotally.

ps. I think your definition of "traffic hunter" might be different as opposed to event or seasonal sites that Ember appears to be running. When I see traffic hunter, I think about meme targetting the latest "hot" phrases.

@ember

Pageviews and traffic do make a difference, it's a pre requisite to income.

I personally start taking people's observations seriously if they have at least 100k monthly views.

I am starting to understand why people who are doing well drop out of this forum.

@frankleeceo
My website is 10+ years old and in the better times it received 3 times more pageviews, so overall RPM is not so insanely high as it looks like.
Your idea on "reset" is noteworthy, but it doesn't explain why there are blank ads all around the website and when ads are shown, they are barely targeted. Even link ads. Like lately I see iPhone related link ads and I never gave Google even a slight hint, that I'm iPhone guy.

if you are looking for someone with high PVs and the same issue.. I get between 1.3M and 1.5M pageviews per month across 4 sites. Rpm drop about 60%+ in late sept.. over the course of a week and never recovered. Was mostly CTR drop for me.. oddly enough a friend of mine in the same niche lost about the same percentage of income back in Feb but it was his CPC... so odd.

Venting here is great but the truth is i dont think there is anything we can do on our end.. its all controlled by google.

I am lucky enough to have a lot of opportunities with direct advertising and affiliate ads. I have been pushing those forms of income harder since the adsense drop...

Adsense used to make up 80% of my income.. now its closer to 30%.. Though i am making more money over all thanks to other forms of advertising. Adsense earnings are at about 50% of what they have been

Traffic up.. all other advertising earnings up... adsense down.