Did Your Adsense Earnings Drop for November?
Over at Performancing, Ahmed Bilal of Soccerlens asked if you had weaned your blog from Adsense yet. I know big Adsense earners are out there, but for some of us, we’re better off exploring other avenues of monetization. However, I believe many new web masters start out with Adsense. And as of late, I’m beginning to see a pattern, that when blogs become popular enough, it might be more viable finding sponsors to sell banner ads to, depending upon the niche. As the discussion went on, the focus went to how Adsense earnings for November dropped.
Bloggers reported that their clickthrough rate for the first 2/3 of November was dismal. They also said that it picked up again by around November 20. During Thanksgiving in the USA, however, general Adsense clickthrough rate was down again for the holidays. We haven’t exactly come up with a conclusion, but I believe the reason is the newly-implemented Adsense clickable area reduction. If you’ve forgotten, Adsense just reduced the ad area visitors can click at to just the anchor link. With the clickable area reduced, visitors are less likely to randomly click on ads than before. They’d only most like click on ads they’re really interested in, otherwise, they pass up. Apparently, I’m not the only one of the opinion. More similar discussions in web master forums have cropped up.
Google claims that with the clickable area reduced, conversions might be higher and hence advertisers would be inclined to pay more. I find that to be half and half, however. I had one click the other day from one of my blogs which surprisingly earned me $1.06. No, really. I was surprised myself. But so far, that’s about it. None of the clicks on my ads had an abnormally high earning. If anything, I, too, suffered from this change in Adsense. How about you?
Filed under: AdSense News
