Your Theory Why AdSense Earnings Were Higher Years Ago

May 7, 2009

Before starting this topic, I would like you to share what is your opinion about Adsense from 2006 till now. Are your earnings lowered? Here is a discussion of a webmasterworld user opening this topic.

A civil discussion, not a debate. It’s fairly clear there was an AdSense boom time and then a periodof change that affected revenue, or at least it wasn’t so easy to turn a buck. Not everyone has experienced a decrease because not everybody is standing still. Nevertheless, I think even those who are making more now than then understand what I’m alluding to as far as how much easier it was to make a buck when the service was new as opposed to now. I am not saying AdSense is dead or not lucrative. I’m just pointing out that there has been a change/growth/whatever and am throwing out the question asking for some reasons why you think this might be so.

Please list your theory, speculation, or wild idea why you think AdSense earnings were higher before than now?

Here is one theory. As I recall, there were thousands of dollars worth of AdWords coupons flooding Internet conferences. Those AdSensers who have not attended conferences several years ago won’t know what I’m talking about so before you comment on this theory, hear me out. (Here is a recent example of an AdWords promotion that would inject Google money into the system, though probably not on the same scale as in the beginning).

Every conference I went to there were thousands of dollars worth of coupons available from denominations of $250 on down (as I recall). I think there may have been $500 coupons available, too. There were so many coupons floating around that some people were selling them, exchanging them between themselves, and opening multiple AdWords accounts to take advantage of them.

Could part of the higher payouts have to do with there being less publishers in the system? Is it possible that another contributing factor in those early days of higher ECPM was the flood of AdWords coupons?

Here are my personal theories which I think about adsense and not only adsense or other pay per click program but also affiliate programs & affiliate networks.

Slow down in new fresh to the net ad clicking users.
Ad blindness for veteran net surfers. Which I think it will be almost impossible.
Less MFA has to affect a segment of publishers.
Landing page rules turning off some advertisers.
AdWords complexity. I have read many “starters” complaining about the complexity of Adwords
Doubleclick acquisition injecting more publishers than advertiser leads.
Doubleclick injection into the system leading to AdSense flirting with ad blocking.
SmartPricing algo becoming more aggressive to balance supply with demand and not just conversion.
Google dropping the ball on code quality due to lack of competition for too many years leading to data loss that is later artificially unfairly balanced out.
More advertiser control positively affecting few and devastating the rest.
Publishers now focussing in Pay per lead which is better. If you have a website that have good adsense earnings and steady, just try with pay per sale and you will see that will be more profitable than adsense.
Apart from the increase in publishers thus decrease the pie a bit, Google is now a publicly listed company and they need to please their share holders more than us.
Google silently taking a bigger portion of publisher’s earnings to meet the market expectations. This is normal in the business area. When you have a high demand in a product you should Increase your price in this issue Google is increasing their earnings from clicks that adsense publisher make.
Economy changes over time. Advertisers change their budgets over time. I’m the perfect example. We use to spend $1000/month just for branding on Adwords. Now we spend $50/month due to cutbacks.
Finally, All depends on the niche that you are!