Is it me or has adsense done some sort of change? My sites have 2 ads on them regularly... When i implemented autoads last month.. they added 2-3 new ads per page... i removed it because i didnt like the placement and they didnt bring in much money.

Since my RPM is down to about 20-30% of what it was last year, I decided to switch autoads back on... its been over 24 hours and there is no change.. meaning still only 2 ads per page. Last time the changes were almost immediate.

PS today is the lowest RPM i have had in 10 years working with adsense... new record. also the lowest earning day since Feb 2015... but i have 3x the traffic.

Ezoic is nice but they slow down the site, and AdPushup ruins the user experience. They simply told me to scarify the site's performance and user experience a little to earn more.

This month is the worst for me for AdSense earnings. Really disappointed. Mine best rocking month was October 2017

Yeah, this month is going to be my worst probably seven years. In fact I will be very very lucky if I actually get finalised with a three digit figure.

Even though we are not the majority - there are enough of us here with problems/sudden drops via Adsense, that I'm surprised that the issue is not getting much play in the trades/press. Isn't it hard to assume that we are ALL serving bad code, etc., or deserved to be marginalized?

I mean, come on - one person with problems has a responsive site about cooking.

I think you'd have to be one of these websites that make several million dollars a year with AdSense before the press are going to be interested in reporting it.

@Ironside you are probably right - though some of the posters here I think are pretty high-dollar, (which to me is six figures yearly...) but OTOH, I'm a cheap date, I guess.

Hate to say it but I think things are going to continue to decline for the small publishers. I hope I'm wrong.

It's going down...

BTW, anyone using HSTS here?

I think you are probably right, I can't see those of us who are seeing pathetic earnings suddenly doing a U-turn and going back to how it used to be. I think the days of really good earnings are long gone. I've managed to reduce my hosting costs quite a lot so as long as I can easily cover the cost of the server then I shall continue.

BTW, anyone using HSTS here?

I don't use HSTS, but it's probably a very good idea to begin using it. It's simple enough to implement, and I can't see any downside to it.

@Ironside I plan to wait it out but my sites are pretty much on autopilot. I do push traffic through social media but that's not time-consuming either.

@Azlinda or @Mayank what's HSTS?

Thanks

@Nubchai I got to know about HSTS today only :D Google loves HSTS as it improves performance, basically your website will declare to browsers such as Chrome/Firefox/Edge to force HTTPS connections before sending the requests. For example, if you attempt to access Twitter, the browser will force https, thus it will improve performance.

Gmail.com is on the preload list, which means that the aforementioned browsers will never make insecure connections to Gmail; if the user types

http://gmail.com

, the browser first changes it to

https://gmail.com

before sending the request.

[security.googleblog.com...] - Google's article from last year (September).

Submit HSTS enabled site to Chrome's preload list from here:

https://hstspreload.org/

Cloudflare offers HSTS. I'm going to go there now and enable it.

@Unshiny i make mid 5 digits every month with adsense... even now with my 50% earnings cut.. I can't even get a response from adsense let alone any attention.

@Linda You can also add this to your htaccess:

 <IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"
</IfModule>

Anyways, nothing can improve the speed if we have AdSense :D It's a great if you've got regular readers.

@Kegnum Try AdX + PubGalaxy, performs really good, you just need traffic.

Thank you, MayankParmar!

@kegnum thanks for letting us know....though that is really disturbing that you are being treated like that. To me that speaks of either a larger problem at Google or of a paradigm shift there which is no good for my shop anyway...sigh.

Perhaps you should hire me, keg. I am a good writer with a ridiculously eclectic background....

@MayankParmar thank you for the HSTS info. You always share great information here!

@MayankParmar is great. Yet, be careful.
Implementing HSTS is, technically speaking, not a joke since, to make it work properly, you'll probably have to edit your websites' server configuration files (and not simply the .htaccess). To get Strict Transport Security woring on an Apache environment is rather easy; to make your sites (particularly if served as www.) suitable for preload listing is something different and could potentially harm your SEO very, very seriously, especially if you have mixed https / non https directories.
To enable HSTS as @MayankParmar suggests can't harm you at all. To try submitting a not-perfectly-tuned HSTS-enabled site to the preload list could be dangerous, instead.
I suggest you to read the all docs you can find on Google, GitHub, and so on, before making such a move.

Anyone noticed AMP CPM's have dropped a bit in last week or so?

@riccarbi Right. Though my host Cloudways is already configured to support HSTS :D That site I shared will first check our web server compatibility, and then only we will be allowed to submit.

@KaseyM It seems same, though it was never good for me, the performance has been always below average -_-. Maybe we should try AMP Auto ads?

Is anyone else seeing impressions dropping through the floor last few (24) hours? Media net in particular is #*$!y...

My AdSense revenues were down in January and February and I see no sign of improvements.

So, I am planning to try (1) DoubleClick for publishers (DFP) and (2) Google ADX.

But I am not sure who will send payments. In AdSense, Google sends payments every month to the bank account of the publisher. It is an automatic process. So, the publishers do not need to contact the advertisers. But what is the payment process for each of the following options?
(1) DoubleClick for publishers (DFP) and
(2) Google ADX.

Can anyone please explain in details?

Hey, Paul!

Google AdX payment is send by your partner, who will get you AdX, remember it's not directly available like AdSense, you need a partner. You can use DFP to increase your AdSense/AdX earnings, but DFP is complicated, you may need a Google Certified Partner to manage your DFP account.

@MayankParmar

Thanks for your reply. I have some more specific questions.

(1) Is there any chance that the partner will be fraud and will not send the payment? What action can I take if I do not get my payment? Are they able to send the payment to Singapore? From which country do they send payments?

(2) How much will they keep? is it possible that I earn more even after they get their %?

(3) Do they pay every month? What is their payment schedule and how do they make the payment (such as directly to the bank)?

(4) I have optimized my revenue with a combination of link menu and image+text ads (as well as responsive ads). Will they force me to change this ad combination to their desired layout?

(5) Will they be able to see my visitor statistics?

(6) I can directly see my earnings statistics from my Google AdSense. How do I see my day-to-day earning statistics after joining with a partner?

(7) What is the guarantee that they will not steal the idea of my website / business and secretly start a clone?

FYI, previously, several AdX partners invited me to join them as my site has nearly a million page views per month. But I have always been skeptic about them and preferred to stay away.

@Paul

No, Google Certified Partners won't run away with your money, do not worry about them, I'd recommend you to contact Cybermedia services, Ezoic or AdPushup services, I'm using their CyberMedia's AdX for a while, so far no issues. They keep 15% of the revenue, and the payment will be in your bank account by 1st of every month. No, they will not force you to do anything, it's all up to you, they will recommend and suggest you the changes. They cannot see your visitors if you refuse to give them access to Analytics. They will provide you with a dashboard with daily statistics. It's not their job to steal our ideas, they have thousands of publishers, and employees.

If you go with any unknown partner, you can expect the unexpected.

@MayankParmar

Thanks for your reply.

Are you earning more with the AdX partner compared to Google AdSense after your AdX partner keeps 15% commission?

I believe you are automatically eligible for DFP as long as you have adsense account. Self managed DFP account earnings is sent through the normal adsense payment method. (In terms of dynamic allocation that is), DFP is in essence an "adserver" which puts together the "partners" or agencies that you have. With this you have the capability to do frequency cap or geo target etc.

I believe DFP's dynamic allocation taps into Adx inventory. So you probably do not need to use DFP while trying to traffic individual Adx supplier codes. You want to minimize loops while maximize revenue.

DFP is free for the first x amount of impression I forgot. I believe it's something in the range of 20 or 60 million impressions per month, something pretty high. I just remember this figure was hard to find in their support document. So I am not trying to dig that out right now.

It's charged by usage or the amount of traffic that it serves through the ad server. But you will need to net roughly mid 4 figure or even 5 figures monthly to start having to pay for the service. The final cost of DFP is roughly 3~5% of the earning for my setup. But that means with a small account, DFP should be completely free. It doesn't hurt to learn and try to use it, (it's free to try after all).

DFP has a learning curve however. It took me a while to wrap my head around it.

The crash in RPM continues post valentine's day for me.

[edited by: frankleeceo at 6:42 pm (utc) on Feb 25, 2018]

@frankleeceo

I agree with you. If I can save 15%, that's a big boost in the revenue and profit.

I have decided to give Google DFP a try.