AdSense eCPM is significantly increasing.

[KLB]

While I'm sure we don't want to discuss every daily fluctuation in AdSense, I think this is worth mentioning.

Over the past couple of weeks I have noticed a steady climb in AdSense eCPM for my environmental chemistry website. Now that a new month has started and advertisers are running at full budget, it appears that my revenue rates could be approaching October's pre "smart pricing" levels. If this is more than an issolated trend, it will be very good news for all of us. :)

[Chris]

October was amazing for me too... but I'm not up to those levels yet. In fact the last week has been somewhat poor.

[moonshield]

Last Week was terrible for me but it looks to be picking up again. Earlier weeks in February were awesome.

[KLB]

I haven't done any detailed crunching of numbers for quite some time as it was just too depressing to crunch the numbers after the introduction of Smart Pricing, but maybe I'll tackle this today and see if I can soothsay any trends out of my stats.

[KLB]

Okay it took me most of the afternoon to complete, playing in forums, downloading logs, processing logs, etc. But I crunched some numbers and in general this is what I'm seeing. Sorry no exact numbers. No sense tempting the fate of Google.
My daily page views and visits from this past October to now are down about 1/3, while this is not uncommon for me as October is traditionally my busiest month; they are down from last year this time by about 20%. I credit this to two factors:
I'm very aggressive about blocking those who block my ads, which is starting to prevent more schools from being able to use my site. While I am losing some traffic because of my ad-blocking policy, I don't really care because people block ads are denying me the ability to generate ad revenue anyways. I do provide an ad-free subscription option, which some have taken advantage of.
I'm shifting the target of my site from students to professionals. I had started my plans to shift from targeting students to targeting professionals about a year ago and I'm glad I did. Students are great for generating traffic, but lousy for generating ad revenue. With Google's new "smart pricing" this can be a double whammy because they also drive down the quality of clicks I send Google. Now instead of content of most interest to the classroom, I'm focusing on acquiring articles that are of more interest to professionals. I'm also shifting to being more of a news site than a pure resource site. My hope is to improve the quality of traffic I generate. This shift of focus has begun to pay off as my site was recently added to Google News index.
My average CPC for Google AdSense has declined from this past October by about 25% and it is down from last year at this time by around 35%.
My eCPM is UP from October by about 3% and it is up from last year by around at this time by around 140%.
My CTR is up from October by around 42% and up from last year this time by around 120%.

What this boils down to is that my overall daily earnings are down from October by around 20% but up from last year this time by around 100%.

This creates a lot of confusing numbers, but in general I think it means that at least in my case, AdSense is getting better at targeting ads for my site and the quality of my traffic has been increasing. This is resulting in a much higher CTR which is more than compensating for a lower CPC and this is starting to make up for lower traffic levels.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I'm very aggressive about blocking those who block my ads,

How do you determine who these people are?

[john190]

I saw a good increase in earnings last month, but then I always seem to get an increase in my earnings towards the end of the month.

[KLB]

How do you determine who these people are?
JavaScript and CSS. Basically all ad-blocking software does one of three things:
they prevent the ad-file from loading;
they hide the ad using CSS or;
they write the ad's HTML source out of the webpage.

Knowing this one only needs to use JavaScript to test to see if the ad object exists, determine its CSS display and visbility states, test the object's size and test to see if the HTML source is intact.

To enforce the ad-blocking ban and make sure people aren't simply disabling the onload event or JavaScript I use CSS to hide the content of a webpage until the JavaScript runs correctly and enables the content. To protect the script, all object IDs, function names and variables are randomly generated. I also try to make many of the regular images look like ads to screw up the ad-blocking

[Chris]

Try this:

http://www.blue.lu/other/blocker/

As a first step to getting a system like Ken's.

You know Ken.... a tutorial how to setup a system like yours would make a great article.

[KLB]

I'll work on it. Believe it or not some firm has been paying me really handsomely simply to provide consulting on how I do it and the general state of ad-blocking, without having me do any coding. I've probably made more consulting on this issue than I lost from ad-blockers. I find that really funny.

[Chris]

It sounds like you've made yourself out to be an expert in the field.

[KLB]

It sounds like you've made yourself out to be an expert in the field.

Purely by accident, but I have spent huge amounts of time researching the issue. In some ad-blocking forums I'm one of the top posters. Talk about good debates.

[charmedlover]

If I was to take similar actions my members would be so angry as many of them block ad. However, since I only have like 10 active members and I've known them for so long, they prefer private advetisers. Their reason is because they load faster.

From what my stats show, they only block ad networks and not the actual ads, which would be hard anyways as they're usually text and image (so they're fluid).

The way I look at it, the people who block ads probably won't click on them anyways, unless they don't realize they're ads.

My AdSense profit is going up, but still low. YPN just took out money from my account to be processed into a check. Chitika is crappy and once I get one check I'll probably ditch it, the payout rate is bad.

[KLB]

I don't use these tactics on all sites. I think there are some places it is better not to use them. Forums is one of them. By contributing to and posting in forums people are providing value to a forum so even if they are blocking ads they still are giving back to the overall effort. Ad-blocking countermeasures are best reserved for pure content sites.

[Cutter]

Have you considered selling a packaged (or subscription) counter ad-blocking solution?

[KLB]

Something may be in the works via a third party. Proposals are being worked out. When the time is right I'll be less cryptic.

[Westech]

Sounds great. I'm actually surprised that we haven't seen any solutions like this from the major ad networks. It seems that they would have more to lose from this than any of us.

[KLB]

We all know how projects go when they get mixed into some sort of official project. I wouldn't expect to see any results for six months or so. Right now I have no idea what turns this project will take.

[Chris]

Okay, today is my worst day off adsense in a long long time. My eCPM has dropped considerably. I suppose it could be because the first of the month fell close to a weekend and people might be putting it off until monday to renew their campaigns.

[Dan Grossman]

I saw a new site targeted campaign on one of my sites this weekend. It's a shame none of my content sites have enough traffic for the CPMs to really add up to more than.. well, more than a monthly car insurance bill or so. Even if it were my primary income, I don't think I'd watch eCPMs on a daily basis, too much stress over numbers I would never change something for. A poor month might get me to reevaluate whose ad should run where, perhaps.

AdSense eCPM increased from November to February by 16%.
YPN eCPM increased from November to February by 26%.

[Cutter]

My Adsense earnings are pretty weak today too, despite re-optimizing several of my sites. I'm not too concerned, I've got plenty of other things going on, and I expect several of these sites to grow exponentially this year anyway.

[MaxS]

I'm definitely seeing this decrease, my eCPM today is ~%50 lower than it is usually.

[KLB]

There has been no change for me today. Today's eCPM is right in the same range it has been for a couple of weeks now.

I hope we aren't going to become like the worry warts at SPF and stress over every daily fluctuation in eCPM. What we need to look for are long term trends that take place over many weeks, not daily swings.

[Cutter]

Exactly, you can't let this stuff bother you. The same goes for people who "can't sleep at night" because they think that Google might ban them for no reason.

[Chris]

My rates are still low.

[KLB]

I haven't crunched the numbers since I posted my comment above, but my daily revenues are still better than Jan. and Feb. and my eCPM appears to be holding steady. I wonder if there is another shift taking place that is similar to the Nov. smart pricing that effected some sites but not others.

[Masetek]

My rates have been low for about 5 days now, about 1/2 usual eCPM

[michael_gersitz]

Yesterday was one of my best days in over a year. All my eCPMS for all my channels seemed to explode.

[KLB]

One possible cause of some members' reports of droping eCPM could be a new demographic targeting option Google has added to site targeting. It appears that when doing a site targeted campaign, one can narrow the list of sites down by specfic demographic criteria. This could be reducing the number of site targeted ads some sites are getting.

[littlegray]

My eCPM dropped by around 50% at the beginning of March as well. Its been getting a little better the past couple of days.

[KLB]

With the talk about droping eCPM, I took a look at my eCPM since the beginning of Feb. While my eCPM does look like it is lower now than it was at the end of Feb., it is the same or better than the beginning of Feb.