Adsense Earnings Low? Here’s Why

Posted by MyOwnDemon

May 14, 2008

Browsing through some internet marketing forums I frequent, and reading some other blogs, one thing is painfully clear. Adsense earnings seem to be down across the board. People are bitching about it left and right. I’m glad it’s not just me. At first, I thought I got smartpriced but I don’t think that’s quite the case.

A while back, Adsense changed their ad unit format so that the entire ad unit was no longer clickable. Now, just the actual title and url link in the ad can be clicked. The entire middle “content/description” portion of the ad is no longer clickable. I have a feeling this one little change is the biggest factor in lowering alot of publishers’ CTRs.

Another thing that irritates me about Adsense at the moment is those little arrows they decided to put on every ad unit. While they’re not overly intrusive, they basically make your nicely blended adsense unit appear more like an ad. In the event someone actually decides to use the arrows to browse more ads (I have no idea why anyone would), they sure as hell aren’t scrolling over into more expensive ads. The first ad shown will most likely always get you the highest paying click — so, in theory, the more someone scrolls, the less you’re likely to earn when they do click.

After these incredibly stupid changes were made, the sites I did have making a few bucks per day with Adsense are now only making a dollar or so. I figure sooner or later Adsense will change these things back when they realize it’s hurting their bottom line, but in the meantime, publishers will remain frustrated with their lowered Adsense revenues.

You’d think a company that earns a majority of their revenue through their Adsense/Adwords advertising platform would think about these things in more detail before they go into effect. After all, they earn money from every click - just like we do.

Bookmark to: