Here's the official announcement from Google confirming it's to retire the ad balance feature and it'll concentrate on developing a suite of blocking controls instead.

We're removing ad balance from AdSense accounts on May 20, 2020. We'll also remove the ad balance experiment option, including all completed ad balance experiments, on this date.

If you're currently using ad balance or running ad balance experiments, we'll email you with additional information. If you're not using these features, then you don't need to take any action.

[support.google.com...]

I tried Ad Balance several times in the past and neither got results that made sense nor really understood its real scope. On the one hand, Google invited me repeatedly to use it to reduce the number of ads shown on my websites (I had three units per page on desktops and two on mobiles, at the time) and focus on "the best performing ads". On the other hand, it invited me even more insistently to enable AutoAds, injecting up to ten crappy ad units per page. I even tried to enable both, thus getting a bit fewer ad units; all crappy. Now Ad Balance is gone. I won't miss it. I hope they will soon drop Auto Ads and AMP as well.

I wont miss it either. I only ever saw reduced earnings with it and it did little to can spammy/terrible ads.

I think Auto Ads is the future for the program, honestly - taking more control out of the hands of the Publisher is always in their best interest. I wouldnt be surprised if one day that is the ONLY option.

Nice... really annoyed.

96% revenue and 48% ads made my pages look acceptable.
Now, I'll get 100% revenue and 100% ads that will make my pages look cluttered and annoying.

Bah.

I think Auto Ads is the future for the program,

I hate to say it, by I agree, it is looking like they are heading in that direction. I guess moving the Ad Manager and header biding will be the last resort. Last resort, in that it is more complex and requires more work that may not be profitable in the end, obviously if you have a lot of traffic then it is likely well worth the effort.

I won’t be sorry to ad balancer go - it never worked for me. The day that auto ads are the only option is the day that I’m done. They generate about 1/3 the revenue of manual ads.

I think Auto Ads is the future for the program,

In my experience, Auto Ads are just a way for Google to control better how much you'll get from AdSense, your pre-defined slice of the pie, so to say. I'm currently using both manually placed Ads and Auto Ads. Since I have enabled Auto Ads, my daily revenue has become quite predictable. Before, I was having good days and bad days; now all days look the same. And, overall, my average revenue per day has decreased. I guessed techniques such as header bidding were supposed to increase publishers' revenues not to shrink them. If this is the future, I'm pretty worried about it.

Since I started using manually ads then my revenue does not goes up well but when I started using auto ads it sounds well and earnings make sense , I stated using this since last year and it cools earning 100$ within 4days then but now with this coronavirus earnings drop but still manageable but it drops then last yr hopefully it will rise back I don't change my ads since last yr because auto ads makes more sense is Google that controls it in your site by themselves

but why this decision?

but why this decision?

Possibly because, with more and more publishers using Auto Ads, ad balance no longer makes sense.
I bet that the Auto Ads algorithm already contains an ad-balance-like feature designed to maximize Google's revenues.

Exactly Ad balance is not making sense anylonger I remember when I use it then doesn't counts well then was told to ad auto ads then it changes back then advice you guys should add it and let's see the performance

You can still achieve something very similar to ad balance using using unified pricing rules in Google Ad Manager.
I think that the point about AdSense moving to auto ads is spot on. That is definitely how many of people in Google see the future of the platform.

I think they are removing it because they are desperate for advertisers, so now instead of showing the highest paying ads on your site they will save those for the major websites like new york times, and espn, etc and will give us the low paying advertisers.

I think they are doing this because of the virus, it really hurt the economy.

Or .... it was a tweak too far and time told that the experiment wasn't useful ... for them, or the publisher!

Hello,

Now, all it needs is to restore the backup / fallback ads feature.

There must be an ongoing fight between evil and good inside Googleplex.

Regarding us, AdSense Publishers, there are two tribes: the impressionists and the userists.
The impressionists, all they want are impressions and high CTR. They're high on these metrics. Those are the KPI, nothing else. They breathe, eat and sleep KPI.
The userists are the real Googler, the one that wants to change the world, the prince that wants to fight the dragon to save the princess, and they simply want smiles on Google users, no matter what, no matter who.
The fight is necessary but, no one should ever win, for everyone's sake.
This fight should take all eternity.

And yet, as of 2020, I think impressionists are getting some ground... hope not.

There must be an ongoing fight between evil and good inside Googleplex.

Regarding us, AdSense Publishers, there are two tribes: the impressionists and the userists.
The impressionists, all they want are impressions and high CTR. They're high on these metrics. Those are the KPI, nothing else. They breathe, eat and sleep KPI.
The userists are the real Googler, the one that wants to change the world, the prince that wants to fight the dragon to save the princess, and they simply want smiles on Google users, no matter what, no matter who.
The fight is necessary but, no one should ever win, for everyone's sake.
This fight should take all eternity.

And yet, as of 2020, I think impressionists are getting some ground... hope not.

And then, there were the "utilitarians" that don't give a damn about Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok, and all the like, but just want to earn a decent living by publishing their and their contributors' original content on the web...

Yet, utilitarian's lands aren't as fertile as the great kingdom's (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, TikTok, and all the like) lands are...
Nobody forces you to live on these domain's grounds - you can earn your living wherever you want, however you want.

But, being this an AdSense board, I think you are a little misplaced for this fairy tale. :)
Go and buy a prepper book, I think it suits you better. :P

Let's keep it simple. There's a game. You play ... or you don't. After all, it is YOUR choice to play. The HOUSE doesn't care, they take any and all comers.

There ain't no "tribes" ... there's players and the house. Just know the house always wins.

Take your chances. Or take your lumps.

ON THE OTHER HAND, you can take charge and do it all yourself, but that's a different topic and is NOT adsense.

I only used the ad balance to determine the fill rate. And welp, fill rate is around 30% now. I must say, the many clients I work with, have all stopped using GA, simply because it's not the best way to attract customers, sales, interactions of users. FB, Instagram have been booming with many new features of advertising such as built in systems directly on FB or Instagram for Contests Form Entries, Product Samples and the simple ability to be able to create ads to have folks message you is another huge step towards a better world of advertising.

GA simply seems to be losing the Advertising Battle here and you can easily see it as Google now spams their own search results with numerous tricky spammy ads, resulting in many invalid clicks that most Advertisers do not want anymore.

Greed has killed something that was so perfect.

There must be an ongoing fight between evil and good inside Googleplex.

But, being this an AdSense board, I think you are a little misplaced for this fairy tale. :)
Go and buy a prepper book, I think it suits you better. :P

Of course, I'll do; and I suggest you do it too...;)
I also suggest you buy a microeconomics book (I did it, many years ago). You'll find out that there is no such thing as "a fight between evil and good" in real-world companies, only a fight to maximize revenues (or reduce losses) as much as possible. Google doesn't make an exception. It never made. That's why to be a "real Googler" doesn't make any sense unless you are a Google employee or Larry Page.

The internet is filled with testimonies of ex-employees that wanted to fight the good fight and lost or forfeited - the one that isn't solely based on KPI, be them impressions, CTR, revenues, stock values, quarterly results or whatever.
Those are important and vital and should never be forgotten but, those who focus solely on them will fade away...
Google started as one of those that wasn't solely focused on these KPIs.
Those were Altavista (remember ads in Altavista?), WebCrawler, Yahoo, AskJeeves, Hotbot, and all those tombstones. See where they are now?

The fight between the "good" (the user and the idea first) and the "bad" (the money, the stockholders first) within a company will always exist and it's important that exists.
The key is the balance - neither side should win the battle.

Regarding Google, and its AdSense product, I hope this key balance doesn't get the same destiny as the Balance which themed this thread.

I am one of those that keeps an eye on KPIs but, the user is my first and utmost priority, even if my KPIs aren't top notch (some of them, I completely ignore).
I partnered with Google also because of that - I saw them more focused on user than on revenue.
But these last years are worrying me and I don't see alternatives - I just hope they arrive soon enough or that the balance keeps going inside Google.

I hate to deal with sales, be it clients or suppliers - Google AdSense took this away from me and every day I thank them for this.

Cut-and-paste, and crossed fingers does work --- some of the time.

Still--- remains the best game in town.

I originally liked the Ad Balancer a lot! I was able to get rid of ads that paid less than $0.01 and give those impressions to locally sold ads that were worth a lot more.

But when they took out the passback feature, there was no further value to use Ad Balancer >:-(

ad balancer worked wonders when it was first introduced a few years back, for waterfalling stacks

ad balancer became nonrelevant when they removed the ability to back fill ads. it became even more irrelevant with the adaptation of header bidding via admanager. i stopped using it sometime last year completely.