Website owners who use Google AdSense as a way to monetize their creations are wondering if AdSense has lost its mojo. Many website and blog owners are reporting significant drops in January and February and popular blogs on SEO are covering the topic as well:
- Why AdSense Earnings Are Sharply Dropping
- Why AdSense Earnings Are Dropping.
- Google AdSense Earnings Way Down in January 2008?
People are speculating as to why the drop has occurred. Are the big name advertisers cutting back on their ad spending for 2008? Has click fraud gotten the better of Google and people are turning elsewhere to spend their marketing dollars? Is there a looming recession that will impact every website owner who is trying to sell ad space? Is it time to move away from Google to some of the other ad networks?
One element that has undoubtedly impacted earnings is Google’s modification of the clickable regions of the ads. Each ad typically has a headline, two lines of description and a link. Late last year Google made a change where only the headline and the link are clickable where the description is no longer count as a click for the ad.
I do partially rely on Google for income on my site so I thought I would compare my stats from January 2007 to January 2008. I can’t share exact figures without violating Google’s Terms of Service but I will share the following comparison data:
- 31 days # impressions: increase of 150%
- 31 days CTR: decrease of 40%
- 31 days Page eCPM: decrease of 30%
Overall the total impressions and the number of clicks have gone up when comparing January 2007 to January 2008. This simply reflects the growth of my site with the work done over the course of a regular year.
The disturbing statistics are the decrease of click through rates (CTR) by 40% and the decrease of the effective cost per thousand (how much money I make off of Google AdSense for every thousand people who visit my site – eCPM) by 30%.
From the data on my website it seems that when comparing January of this year to last year Google is actually paying more per click but less people are clicking through. This can easily be calculated because the drop in eCPM is less than the drop in CTR (ie. I make 30% less per thousand visitors because of a 40% drop in click through rates not because the ads aren’t paying as much per click).
Overall I made far more money this January (almost double) compared to last January because the biggest increase was the 150% in impressions. Also keep in mind that this is only a one month comparison and that many websites might have a cyclical nature to them.
So why is the CTR dropping? The clickable region is definitely one reason. Perhaps the ads being shown are less relevant than they used to be or the new content / layout that I’ve added doesn’t convert as well as the old stuff.
I’ll be spending some time over the next couple of weeks to better understand what has changed on my end over the past year and what might have had an impact on my AdSense earnings.
Do you run AdSense on your webpage? What have your experiences been?
My blog isn’t old enough to be able to go that far back, but another couple of sites we run adsense on have gone up and down seemingly at random for the last few years.
From a new site owners point of view I can say that Googles competition has gained some popularity. I make less money from Google now, but not for any reason more then the fact that I run fewer AdSense ads. AdBrite, while not context sensitive; allows me to reject ads easily.
AdSense on the other hand will run what ever they want, and require you jumping though virtual hoops to stop it (eg: political ads on your puppy grooming site).
Interesting. I was just about to add adsense to my blog. I’m still planning on it, but this is definitely something to keep watch on. Thanks.
I don’t think that it has lost its mojo, I think that too many people are using it. If I decide to get to the top of google and buy the words internet business I would appear higher than people like James Brausch & Terry Dean – guys who are really known for that business.
Once I own the words at a penny a click, someone else will pay 2 cents, then 3 4 and a dollar. We drive the cost per click up and don’t necessarily make back that cost.
Better to either work hard for a ral listing, or work hard with Google and understand that we are getting a smaller margin.
Or – wait until Google merges paid and natural listings without making the difference known to us. (stop, before I rat again).
The debate goes on while Google is makin a killin, the moeny they get through with this system is mental. Are their customers really benefiting only google knows
People are just burned out on them, IMHO. In 2002 they were cool , new, ever so unobtrusive and well…. Google! But now.. add a little too much click fraud and google doesn’t appear to care about it, recession, less interest in things and everyone and their dog has google ads. We’ve OD’d!
You know what irks me? How google can decide at any moment to remove clicks, pay very low amounts for clicks, and unfortunately for some, remove you completely.
That seems unethical and downright illegal. I have some new adsense sites with valuable and original content only to see a click at a decent dollar amount and then it’s gone in an hour or two.
They are obviously saying it is an invalid click, but how the hell do they know? I have articles pointing to these sites as well as good links, so it is BS they do this.
Come on Microsoft! Get Yahoo and make these arrogant google guys clean up their act.
Of all the startups/websites that use Google Adsense as their main revenue model (according to Bizak.com their earnings per visitor (EPV) is just $0.06. That’s not what they earn per click but rather based on the number of visitors they have. In order to make $1,000/month they need over 16,000 monthly visitors – not an easy feat. Better to monetize with services ($1.67 EPV) and/or subscriptions ($1.02 EPV).
Even with these poor earnings 22% of startups/websites rely on Adsense as their main revenue source. 17% services and 8% subscriptions.
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Hello, I’m a new business would you suggest I join Google adsense to bring traffic to my website?