When they enable the double click feature, usually on image creatives, after the first click you can read a "visit site" label, where you have to click again. Something like this: [prnt.sc...]

I know that some can think this "double click" is penalty, and see it as something negative but, I think it's fair and should be applied to all publishers.

- On mobile screen, a 300x250 ad will take 1/3 if the screen, it's easy to accidentally tap on it, while scrolling. (and some are using 300x600 ads on mobile too, so imagine, there are barely no room to put your finger, to scroll),

- If someone click/tap on an ad, on purpose, then this is not going to deter him to have to click a second time... if they don't tap a second time, it means this was a mistake .

So of course, some publishers are abusing of "mistakes", to make money ( disguising ads as navigation, putting ads very close from links, or clickable elements, etc...), but you have to recognize that this is not fair and sane business model. There are too many abuses of this kind, and it's not surprising that advertisers are no longer accepting to pay for this ...

Thanks for the screenshot. Is there anyway to know if an ad is "two click" with actually clicking on it? Is there any safe way to click and test my own ads?

The best way to check is to look at your CTR for each device platform over 30 days or 90 days. You would see a sharp decrease in CTR when the penalty affects you.

I was going to do a write-up on this but never got around to it. Green line is CTR, blue is revenue. The penalty seems to often hit me after sharp increases in revenue (perhaps those are clickbombs and hence the CTR penalty):

[i.imgur.com...]

After I disabled personalized ads for EU users, my RPM is down 40% so far in June. Much more than the 15% my earlier experiment indicated. I can confirm that the AdSense reports still show that "personalized" ads are served whatever that means now. If I click on the "Why this ad" icon, I also still get explanations like "This ad is based on Google's estimation of your interests" or "websites you've visited". But given the sharp decline in RPM, I guess that these are bugs on Google's side.

Maybe I should do what all the major German publishers do and continue to serve personalized ads without consent, although it's an obvious violation of the GDPR.

Maybe I should do what all the major German publishers do and continue to serve personalized ads without consent, although it's an obvious violation of the GDPR.

Why not serving personalized ads with your users' consent, instead?
As long as you collect an explicit consent from your readers, and allow them to revoke such consent when they want, there is no problem to serve personalized ads, as per GDPR.

It is exactly what almost all major EU publishers, though with slighly different methods and procedures, are currently doing.

http://ad.afy11.net/

This AdSense ad request slows down the site.

Analytics is having problems :/

Why not serving personalized ads with your users' consent, instead?
As long as you collect an explicit consent from your readers, and allow them to revoke such consent when they want, there is no problem to serve personalized ads, as per GDPR.

First of all, I don't like to annoy users with a "consent banner". I hate these banners with a passion because personally, I only allow session cookies and have to dismiss these banners over and over again. If disabling personalized ads only resulted in a 10-15% reduction of RPM, I'd be fine with that. Besides, the wide-spread approach of having a prominent "I agree" button and making it a lot more difficult to actually opt out seems to violate the GDPR, too. So instead of a half-baked solution, why not ignore the issue completely, at least for now?

It is exactly what almost all major EU publishers, though with slighly different methods and procedures, are currently doing.

As I said, most major German publishers don't even try to obtain explicit consent. Just visit spiegel.de, bild.de, faz.net, zeit.de, welt.de, or sueddeutsche.de, there's no privacy banner whatsoever (focus.de and chip.de being the exception). Google also keeps tracking users by default and only shows their "privacy reminder". So even if someone was to complain about my site, I could say that I'm just doing what everyone else in Germany does.

Why AdSense is suddenly showing link ads on display ad units? What's wrong!?

The opposite is happening in my site. Image creative are being displayed in link ads placements but some times what I see is the "no image" icon.

It's still same. Displays ads converted into link ads, and my earning is now down.

Gg Google.

It's still same. Displays ads converted into link ads, and my earning is now down

Cat and mouse game?
(and obviously we are not the cat....)

What's up with those white link ads?

What's up with those white link ads?

You're having them too? Thank F for that. I thought there was a problem with my site. It has a dark background and these white-background adverts look awful. No wonder I haven't had a click all day.

Today's CTR is much dropped than before, about half of normal day . Anyone else has same question ?

Yes. CTR dropped for me since yesterday. Also RPM dropped. I can't handle this fluctuations much longer.

Ayyy... CTR dropped here as well, so did RPM!

I am seeing the sponsored label above the link ads again.

Hi, what's the sponsored label ? Did you see it before ?

You mean it says Ad Choices?

Google in late April started testing link ads with large "Sponsored" label in place of small "ads by Google".

It's back again since yesterday.

Today Adsense is performing dangerously well. Adx has been performing good the whole weekend.

We had a really, really good AdSense day a couple of days ago, followed by two more normal days (up a bit or down a bit, nothing special). I'm used to the zig-zags and don't obsess about daily changes. (Usually I don't even look at the stats more than two or three times a week.)

The ad links have been performing spectacularly well this month, so that must be why they've added the Sponsored label, so that my links revenue will come back down to earth.

I had an amazing CPM this weekend, but only for two days, now I'm back to the hell pit!

BTW School summer holiday is here in many countries.

Same here, link ad earning has improved by 30% this month.

It's summer holiday so people should spend more time on my site, as it's about tech :D

Zero clicks so far today, that's not normal, anybody else?

@Ironside, I'm also seeing some very strange stats, my RPM/CTR are way down almost half the average value.

AdSense stats delayed too? lol

Everything is all over the place for me; half of my sites are experiencing about half RPM/CTR, the other half seem fine. Even ones hosted on the same hosting server are behaving differently from one another (therefore, it's probably an Adsense anomaly and not a site related/hosting issue).