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?
