Adsense Much Less Effective these days?

[lisakleinweber]

These days my ctr is about a third of what it was in 2003 and so is my ecpm, on the same site with the same content. It's getting so that I am considering taking adsense off my pages.

Is it just me? is it declining for everyone? If so will it continue to decline until there's nothing left?

I was showing a friend the ins and outs of my business and she pointed at the adsense ad block and said "I never look at those - I thought it was spam" - that was over a year ago and things have just gotten worse since then for me.

how about you?

[Pauline Bennett]

Yes I have noticed a decline too and have also been thinking about taking adsense off my sites.
I am going to look for an alternative, anyone with any suggestions?

[GeronimoBee]

No. I am winning. I so so sorry for your loss.

[webworm]

I have got the same problem but not in huge amount.But i noticed my fall suddenly in the December month.Can someone explain why it was?

[samual james]

I am looking for alternative solution for revenue. my ctr is decreased by 5-7% in 2 months.

[SmileKenya]

It seems to be. Several people have complained in the past and even now. They decry a decline in the their revenue. It is good you have brought the question over board. Lets wait and see the response from other warriors.

[Talen]

It might be that your niche is declining. I know one site that used to pull very well for me with adsense started to slump last year but it was the niche that was in decline.

Do you update the site regularly or is it a set and forget evergreen type site that you may need to spruce up and get more links to?

Typically my adsense has been going up not declining.

[mosthost]

Lisa, your website is 9 years old. Is the content all that old? People love fresh content. Add more fresh content to bring in fresh visitors.

[Megyn]

This could be related to many different factors, niche popularity, content freshness, etc.

[solado]

Also keep in mind new plug ins are avaliable such as 'Adblocker pro' and various tool bars, these block adsense advertisements. These have been increasing in popularity.

Some websites even plead you to disable adblocker.

[Pinky Painter]

There have been bad comments about AdSense. I do not use AdSense but I use AdWords. I found that my keywords bids keep increasing from day to day. And, AdWords keep reporting that my ads does not display at the first page due to low bid. My budget will burst if I were to follow their min bid cost. I am a little fedup however, AdWords still the best tool to advertise.

I believe the same goes to AdSense. There are several publisher & advertiser site such as 7search.com, cpaway.com, adbite and bidvertiser. I don't see they can bit AdSense at the moment. Maybe you can be their publishers, then I'll be the advertiser

[bermuda]

The biggest issue is about Holidays and the fact that people are now usually out, doing shopping by visiting local stores and shops instead of surfing the net like rest of year, clicking on ads and placing orders to buy services and products from internet malls. In nearly all niches, traffic shares have declined compared with a couple of weeks ago and there is nothing to worry about as this is the trend happening almost every year and affecting all businesses on the net.

Perhaps now is the time to examine various parts of websites and carrying out tasks which you have been so busy to take care of since some months ago. At Christmas time and Holiday seasons, there is more time to take care of old issues, perhaps checking out web pages, examining the codes and graphics to make sure all parts of sites are doing well. Even gathering some new bunches of links for sites and adding fresh content pages to them would be great ideas.

[outwest]

Ya I think the holliday season they are not browsing normally, they are directly browsing amazon.com ebay, bestbuy.com etc etc etc, and they are doing other holiday stuff and get togethers

just as Summer is strange too for internet businesses

[Droopy Dawg]

Whew... OK I thought it was just me. I've taken a hit the past couple months, but especially in December. Thought it was something that I was doing/not doing.

[outwest]

Originally Posted by Pinky Painter

There have been bad comments about AdSense. I do not use AdSense but I use AdWords. I found that my keywords bids keep increasing from day to day. And, AdWords keep reporting that my ads does not display at the first page due to low bid. My budget will burst if I were to follow their min bid cost. I am a little fedup however, AdWords still the best tool to advertise.

I believe the same goes to AdSense. There are several publisher & advertiser site such as 7search.com, cpaway.com, adbite and bidvertiser. I don't see they can bit AdSense at the moment. Maybe you can be their publishers, then I'll be the advertiser

Could you give a sample breakdown of how much you usually pay per click
what percentage of people clickin on your ads eventually buy?

I would like to consider possibly using adwords for a specialty coffee business thats very profitable however
the amount of people searching monthly for my main kws are not enough IMO to make the business worthwhile
perhaps even if I paid for clicks , depending on the cost per click it would make it worthwhile

[myiphoneapp]

mainly people use Adsense for earning money, now a days many user know about Adsense adds, so they ignore that types of links, this will be a reason for that!

thanks!

[DarrenHaynes]

I have only been using adsense for around 2 and half years now, but I did change over to using media.net for ads, and started earning more with them! I don't remember the exact figures right now, but off the top of my head I was earning about $2500 a month average with adsense for one on my main sites, and when I switched to media.net I started making around $3000 a month (for equivalant traffic). Which is a good difference.

I now that not everyone has a great result with media.net depending on the topic of their site, but they seem to do well for those who have solid site in the natural health niche (like myself).

If you are looking for an adsense alternative I highly recommend giving media.net a try. You don't have to do one or the other either, you can have both adsense and media.net on the same site/page.

Ya I think the holliday season they are not browsing normally, they are directly browsing amazon.com ebay, bestbuy.com etc etc etc, and they are doing other holiday stuff and get togethers

just as Summer is strange too for internet businesses

Funny thing for my main site is that it peaks considerably in the summer and immediatley after Xmas. In fact my impressions for that site double from about 12-15k on average and to 30,000+ on the 26th of Dec and have kept that way so far. My ad revenue almost triples too which is neat.

I guess the topic of a site plays a big part on how people search and when.

[NYC SEO]

Darren I've noticed that! Don't know why, but after Christmas sales go up.

[ryuchi]

Adsense ads differs from niche to niche so if its not a nice niche for adsense then your earnings will surely be declining now. Ad position is also a factor and another thing have you tried putting up images ad instead of text ads? Fully check your stats first before deciding on taking all of them out.

Ryuchi

[mosthost]

Lots of companies have spent their ad budgets for the year early. In January, they get replenished. December means less demand for clicks and less payouts (except for shopping related). Although it all depends on niche.

[DarrenHaynes]

Darren I've noticed that! Don't know why, but after Christmas sales go up.

My site is based around a certain kind of natural health practice, and you need a piece of equipment to do it. I think traffic goes up because lots of people get this piece of equipment for XMas and then they come to my site to see how to use it better and get the best from it.

Since this practice also becomes more popualr in the summer, I get a boost then too! Still a great niche though, I get 3-4k visits a day on the off seasons :-)

[Matt Attack]

In terms of SEO, I think it is now much harder to rank adsense niche sites than it was even just a year ago. I much rather outsource my SEO efforts these days than do it myself as it's becoming more and more of a daunting time consuming task.

[BigNorm]

I agree Adsense is too hard to make money from now. Everyone should just jump ship to another ad network

[sam1216]

same problem very low ctr and cpc i don't know why

[Jack Sprat]

Well for me (off a low base) Adsense continues to increase for the same old static site which I've done very little with in years. In fact, the average CPC has increased by about 40% over the last couple of years, but the number of clicks is decreasing.