Were you using a CMP, or another method to collect EU visitors consent, before? (you should have since 2018).

The CTR is defined by Google as the ratio between clicks and "page views". If a user declines coolies, or bounces back, after seeing the Adsense's GDPR message, I assume it still count as a "page view".

my bounce rate increased as soon as i turned on the GDPR notice, which I suppose should be expected. lots of people will just press the back button as soon as the pop-up appears.
i don't think there's much we can do about it.

Earlier, a cookie banner used to serve the GDPR purposes well enough and didn't do much harm other than being an annoyance that 99.99999% of people closed without reading. But with regulations tightening and google requiring to use a CMP to run Adsense I decided to swap my cookie banner for a CMP solution. I thought that Adsense's own CMP would be the simplest, but advertising revenue has been worsening by the day, so I'm just wondering if Google's CMP is part of the cause.

Bounce rate does not seem to have worsened. Also, if people would be immediately hitting the back button, I'm guessing adsense wouldn't be serving ads and CTR would not have been affected. Traffic has not dropped. What has worsened is the CTR (...as well as CPC been on a gradual decline). Acceptance rate on the CMP shows above 90% acceptance rate, which I suppose should mean that 90% of people consent to Google serving them ads based on their interests, which should improve targeting of ads, but it seems to be the other way around.

My guesses are:

- either targeting of ads served to customers under the CMP has somehow worsened;
- or quality of the ads in general has been worsening due to cutting of advertising budgets.

WIth the CPC also being a fraction of what it was last year, I'm sort of leaning toward the second guess.

My ‘active view viewable’ stat also dropped by 10% after i turned it on, and the ads were still in exactly the same place. So presumably adsense must still be getting recorded for people who don't get past the GDPR banner, otherwise it wouldn't change.

Thanks for the feedback. So, as others are experiencing negative effects from Google's CMP, I suppose I could try a 3rd party CMP to see if it's any better. Anyone can recommend one that's easy to configure ...and free? :)

There is a list of the IAB certified CMPs in another thread: https://iabeurope.eu/cmp-list/

All AdSense publisher sites (and their traffic) are not the same so, what works great for one might not be ideal for your use. It is best to investigate the pros and cons that are best for your use.

There is a discussion here regarding consent rate and there are a fair number reporting a good rate of consent. You might find some ideas there to help improve it. But as mentioned, not all sites and traffic can use one ideal set of configuration and do as well. That thread is here: [webmasterworld.com...]

Thanks for the link, will have a look!

With banner gdpr drop ctr and cpc after 2-3 days (this is the strange) of use the banner adsense. Consent 92% earning drop >30%. The banner adsense is slow and many Time not all the ads charge. The same problem with other banner gdpr. Probably is a problem of the code for consent. A other problem is the time necessary for charge the page.

But with regulations tightening and google requiring to use a CMP to run Adsense I decided to swap my cookie banner for a CMP solution.

@skips

What cookie banner were you using? I am confused whether to deactivate the plugin that I am running for my cookie banner, and just let the Google CMP take care of this GDPR message part.

I was using this CookieYes/GDPR Cookie Consent plugin but I am just not sure how to configure it, because I am only using a simple message that links to my Privacy Policy page, and none of that Manage Cookies or Accept/Decline Cookies stuff. There is a lot legalese there, and Google's CMP solution in Adsense is supposed to fix the problem.

But I am unable to view this Google CMP in action, I think because I am not from the EU. So I don't know if removing the cookie banner and letting this mythical Google CMP to run is perfectly fine (or not). I can't see anything of this Google CMP although Adsense tells me it is running.

CookieYes completely wiped-out my traffic. I kept CookieYes in place for about a week and then gave up on them. When I removed CookieYes, my traffic rebounded.

I'm not sure what the deal with CookieYes is, but ... never again.

The cmp google Block only adsense cookie. If you use the cmp of google you don't respect the gdpr why you have other cookie, not only the cookie of adsense. And the cmp of google are very poor, if you use this The visualization active drop down. This not with other cmp

@Ebuzz
I just had my own periodically updated cookie banner.

As part of an experiment I have temporarily removed Google's CMP. Can't say the experiment yielded any specific results. The advertising revenue seems to fluctuate ALL the time. CTR can go up and down by 5 times from day to day. CPC can differ by 50 times from day to day.

I know CPC is supposed to be demand/supply based, but I have zero interest in serving low paying ads and would rather just have more whitespace on my site. I have actually removed Adsense from 90% of my pages now. Looks nice and clean.

I mean, seriously, how on Earth does Google expect publishers to professionally run websites and generate quality content, when earnings are completely unpredictable and show crazy fluctuations for no apparent reason from month to month? I mean, seriously. Would be great to have publisher 'unions' or associations of some sort where we could collectively regulate the supply of available ad space if price goes below acceptable levels. Would be even easier if Google introduced some sort of regulatory mechanism on click pricing. I think this would be to common advantage if click prices were more predictable - to publishers, to advertisers and, of course, Google itself.

The decrease in CTR after implementing the GDPR consent message could be related to the additional step in the user experience. The consent message may slightly deter users from engaging with ads, affecting CTR. However, it's essential to consider other factors like seasonal trends or ad placement. Testing different consent message strategies and optimizing ad relevance and placement can help mitigate the impact on CTR. Monitoring user behavior and making necessary adjustments will aid in improving overall engagement and maintaining GDPR compliance.

I saw like a -30% CTR and I disabled the consent until it will be mandatory in January.

Anyone knows other services that will work with Google, that can be fully customized, like to show a small banner at the bottom, and be able to make it to have a white background?
I'm also not sure how that will be connected with Adsense as I saw the banner provided by Google is integrated in the ads themselves.