Adsense is becoming a horror story... I'm glad I've alternatives. Compared to last year February the RPM decreased with about 25%! In the meanwhile I've activated tips from Adsense to raise the RPM (lol). There's something wrong with Adsense and I've contacted several other networks today like Media.net.

My earnings are just getting worse and worse. Close to 75% less clicks, page RPM down 65% and CTR down 70%. The ads I am seeing on review are definitely lower quality/smaller clients. Luckily I'm moving to Mediavine in a few months so I'm just going to limp along until then.

waiting for this end month, if it's still worse like this I will move to another heart...

CTR is down 25% compared to last week. Ads showing up with a telephone number and asking to call... Ads showing up hundreds of times each user instead of showing something else that might interest. Also fake news ads that can't be report like a famous person shown with the text next to it "how to become a millionaire" or "how Musk survived bankruptcy"... ridiculous bad user experience and can't do anything about it.

For those who are experiencing massive RPM drops, is it happening in all the Geos? Is US traffic being affected as well? What is your GDPR set up?

Might be that serving Personalized Ads is set but then no CMP is being used and Adsense is considering all the traffic as Non Personalized? You can check the percentage of each type of traffic in "Targeting types" report. I wrote before about one of my sites being affected, RPM already -60% but I have always had about 90% "Contextual Ads". Also traffic from the US is affected, -50% RPM and GDPR should not affect at least by now.

The other possible reason I can think of is that all the changes to how they label link units have hurt CTR.

Last question: did your site perform really well or had standard values. I'm not sure If I can post CTRs or page RPMs absolute values to take them as reference.

I would like to refer to an interesting observation, which perhaps explains where the causes lie. On a normal day, it was typical for the sales trend to correlate with the number of visitors. Weak sales in the morning, rising sales during working hours, rising sales in the evening. At least for me.

This correlation no longer exists. In the evening there is another descent, but sales during working hours have virtually evaporated. This only makes sense if the value date of the click is completely detached from the action. Real-time reporting was never really real-time, but it was close. Now the clicks seem to disappear in the background processes. The AI either has Alzheimer's or thinks that whoever clicks during working hours should actually do other things and ignores the click / irony off.

However, the check of the clicks seems to be so sharply focused that only a fraction of the clicks are really evaluated or the value of the click is reduced to a very low value. The AI still has to learn what a click is really worth.

@Dollarsound, I'm from Western Europe and I'm using personalised ads. Adsense doesn't make sense at all these days. Today my CTR halved(!) according to the monthly average but CPC doubled. Somehow you would expect better advertisers who are paying more for each click... but there are less clicks so probably bad user experience. At the end still the conclusion that Adsense isn't the quality it was.

The other possible reason I can think of is that all the changes to how they label link units have hurt CTR.

I believe the link unit updates are the main cause for decline in adsense revenue. What can we do?

Few days ago, I enable Auto-ads for my top site. The revenue has actually increased by 40-50% but there is a big mess now. There are large ladder ads displaying right beneath header pushing all site content down. It is only happening on desktop. No such issue on mobile version. 90% site traffic also comes from mobile.

Any solution?

This month despite half terms in some European countries looks acceptable.
No comparison to same period 2018 (- 40 pc). No choice as to accept these ‚changes‘ including SEO etc...

Links are working very well in combination with aut ads even and my ads are not personalised.

They are no general solution to the issues we are all facing as it depends on the geographies you are serving and the niche you are using.

My traffic is mostly US based and 79.5% personalised. My ads are just pure trash. I had an ad that linked to a quiz for "what ride you should be in" and the picture was a VERY suggestive image of a young lady... Links to Japanese cartoons suggesting family relations.

There are very very few well known companies showing ads on my site right now. My non-personalised generic EU readers are getting the best ads right now.

Stats: they are not on real time basis any more.
Looks that Google has opted for energy saving in updating the stats later in the morning (GMT).

I strongly believe Adsense could be much better if Google/Alphabet was open for contact, for example: I don't want to accept a certain advertiser every day at the review center. If I see for example McDonalds and I accept their ads I don't want to see McDonalds the day after it at the review center and the day after that and after that...

I also got scared of full page ads few times on my mobile device... complete horror and user experience? I've no clue how they are going to solve these problems soon.

The following 6 messages were cut out to new thread by martinibuster. New thread at: google_adsense/4937392.htm [webmasterworld.com]
2:58 pm on Mar 1, 2019 (utc -5)

The first day of March, 20,000 MORE page views than the previous Friday and $18 less in revenue. Crazy. Page RPM dropped 33%. I hope this is not an indication of what March will be like. This industry is changing rapidly.