huge drop in page RPM after upgrade from 1.5 to 2.1?

[TUG]

So ive been beating my head against the wall here in trying to sort this out, but its becoming rather expensive to not reach out for help or ideas.

Ever since upgrading from 1.5 to 2.1, the adsense revenue on the forum has been cut by nearly 60%

traffic remains unchanged, the ad units remain unchanged, views/impressions/etc all remain unchanged...but page RPM has gone from 6 or 7 dollars per k, to under 2.

this staggering drop quite literally happens on the day of the upgrade and continues today (roughly 2 weeks later)....and i just dont know what is causing it.

given all the other metrics are the same, the only thing I have noticed are the ads on the site are now REALLY different from what they used to be and not terribly related to the forum itself (ie its a travel / resort forum)...where we used to see ads from resorts/travel companies/yadda...now its just super bizarre ones like boating info and CPA / tax ads . furniture / etc (when browsing from a non logged in browser).

I can only guesstimate that perhaps google has somehow "forgotten" what ads to display on the site or is somehow relearning what to display? I am at a complete loss for any setting/configuration/modificaiton/etc would have caused this..or how to correct it.

I do limit ads to guests only, so I do not have auto ads enabled. previously in xen 1.5 we used the custom scripts to detect if the user was logged in and a member to either trigger or not trigger the adsense code, but this function seems to still work fine in xen 2.0 using the advertising feature (ie ads display for guests, not for members)...and im currently using a number of positions to display the adsense code to replace the same positions we had previously in 1.5 (nothing out of the ordinary, top of forum, sidebar, bottom of forum etc).

I do note also that with alarming regularity, the ad wont even display at all just instead leaving a blank space at the top of the forum header where the ad would normally be displayed. I know that xen is triggering the ad to display because i can see the small text within the ad code that informs guests that (ads are disabled for members)...just no actual ad below it just the blank space where it should be.

usually this indicates that there are no active ads for google to choose from that fit the bill to be displayed, which is quite literally never the case for travel related sites etc and further reinforces the idea that somehow google has "lost" whatever info it had (we've been running ads on this forum since 2006) that indicated the actual genre of the forum, or for whatever reason cant identify it now.

the only other related item I can think of is a change we made shortly after the upgrade to fix the old vb redirects that actually changed all the urls slightly removing the old index.php entry within each URL by configuring the "user friendly url" setting.

perhaps i just have to suffer thru a painful google relearning process despite the content/pages all being the same? I can see within google webmaster tools that the new pages are all indexed (the number of pages indexed nearly doubled within a few days after the upgrade which indicates to me that the "new" pages have been crawled, but it still bothers me that the ads still dont have any relation to the content of the site, and that I see blank ads with such regularity.

any ideas?

 

[entelechy]

It's got to be something relating to where Adsense is placing the ads surely? Do you have manual ad placing or are you using their automatic ad placement?

 

[djbaxter]

It's got to be something relating to where Adsense is placing the ads surely? Do you have manual ad placing or are you using their automatic ad placement?

See above in OP:

I do limit ads to guests only, so I do not have auto ads enabled.

I do think it may have something to do with AutoAds indirectly. If you use AutoAds, you'll notice that the majority of ads now are honking big square or rectangular ads, part of the reason AutoAds look so darn ugly on forums especially when they appear above the content. These also push actual content way down on the page, especially in mobile. Google's mobility division really needs to have a stern word with Google's ads division. But I suspect that there are simply not as many older style banners and/or that they pay less than the newer formats.

One way around this is to use a hybrid of fixed (responsive) ads in certain locations and then enable AutoAds. When you do that, your existing ads (e.g., wide responsive banners below the navbar) are left alone and AutoAds populates areas like the sidebar and above the footer with the larger ads where they are less intrusive and obnoxious. Google will continue to suggest to you that you are missing out on income and that may be true but anyone who cares about the forum and its members should be prepared to make that compromise.

The issue of white space when Google doesn't have an ad to serve in a specific location is highly annoying and I still haven't been able to find a way to avoid this.

 

[TUG]

all of the ads are configured as responsive...and do adjust with page size/mobile devices/etc.

they all contain these lines in the adwords code

data-ad-format="auto"
data-full-width-responsive="true"

for example if my page is set to full screen, it displays this gigantic obnoxious banner graphic (that is again, totally unrelated to travel or similar)



the main "top" banner placement I am using is Container breadcrumb (top): Below ...which puts the ad roughly where we had it displayed within xen 1.5 (which just below the navigation boxes etc). perhaps it needs to be moved ABOVE the breadcrumb vs between it and the main forum headline etc...

I used this resource to choose where the ads would be displayed for reference:

Google Adsense tips and visual overview of ad positions

Below you will find visual templates to help you choose the best location for your ads. You will also find some tips I use to monetize my forum. I would love to start a discussion over here with other forum admins to share your thoughts. Guests...

xenforo.com

I can confirm different ads display for different sizes in that location, even huge gigantic ads when I blow out the screen to full width, or shrink it down to 300pixels wide (or look at it on the phone).

shrinking the very same page down and refreshing it shows another completely unrelated ad:





so clearly the responsive ads are working, they just are no longer even remotely related to the content of the site like they used to be. and that would certainly explain the staggering drop in clicks/rpm...despite traffic/impressions/etc all remaining identical.

 

[TUG]

See above in OP:



I do think it may have something to do with AutoAds indirectly. If you use AutoAds, you'll notice that the majority of ads now are honking big square or rectangular ads, part of the reason AutoAds look so darn ugly on forums especially when they appear above the content. These also push actual content way down on the page, especially in mobile. Google's mobility division really needs to have a stern word with Google's ads division. But I suspect that there are simply not as many older style banners and/or that they pay less than the newer formats.

One way around this is to use a hybrid of fixed (responsive) ads in certain locations and then enable AutoAds. When you do that, your existing ads (e.g., wide responsive banners below the navbar) are left alone and AutoAds populates areas like the sidebar and above the footer with the larger ads where they are less intrusive and obnoxious. Google will continue to suggest to you that you are missing out on income and that may be true but anyone who cares about the forum and its members should be prepared to make that compromise.

The issue of white space when Google doesn't have an ad to serve in a specific location is highly annoying and I still haven't been able to find a way to avoid this.

is there a way to do this and still prevent those auto ads from populating for my members vs just guests? I have no problem doing that, it just didnt seem possible to implement auto ads on a site wide basis but still configure them to only be displayed to guests or visitors not logged in.

auto ads is disabled on that site for this very reason (and enabled on all our other sites).

 

[Ivancas]

This is the score on mobile of a thread with 3 posts only, Google page speed:


I think you should focus on making the site faster

 

[TUG]

today is the busiest day of the week as we send out our newsletter to more than 75,000 subscribers which links them to the forum for viewing the most popular topics of the day. (as i post this, there are more than 1000 active users on the forum).

ironically the biggest impact to the speed score when I run the report is from the google ad script itself....

there is nothing extra configured on the site from the default xenforo installation, but if there are things that should be configured to increase page delivery speed within xenforo itself im all ears! (although it begs the question why xen wouldnt implement those changes by default?) the only scripts that run on the page that arent default xenforo code, are the adsense ad scripts. im not sure how to improve that (also would think that if there were options to do this, they would also be implemented by default?)



what would that have to do with the drop in RPM after upgrading to 2.0? is xen2 slower than xen1.5? is there a document or article I need to read to implement some of these changes to improve the speed of page loading/scripts post upgrade?

 

[djbaxter]

Here's what I do to make- the top ads consistently smaller:

• display ABOVE the top breadcrumbs
• at that location, replace
  

  data-ad-format="auto"
  data-full-width-responsive="true"

  with
  

   data-full-width-responsive="true"
  data-ad-format="horizontal"

Then follow the autoads instructions on the Google site for inserting the code for autoads and it will leave that location alone.

 

[TUG]

thanks, ill try changing the code to see if that makes any difference:

"Then follow the autoads instructions on the Google site for inserting the code for autoads and it will leave that location alone. "

sorry, im at a loss for this one? google seems to have two options for auto ads...enabling it site wide within the adsense website, or entering a single string of code on each page to enable auto ads on that individual page.

I dont quite understand how either of those options will take into account I dont want ads displayed to members vs guests? that is the part that im missing.

 

[djbaxter]

Yes none of my suggestions will address the issue of who sees the ads.

 

[TUG]

sadly that change to horizontal didnt seem to impact the large ads at all, the size still remains the same after modification...and still nothing related to the site:

 

[TUG]

actually changing the ad type from display ad to "in-article" as a test seemed to eliminate the gigantic ads and now they seem to fit the expected space more.

however still no change in the fact they are no longer related to the site content, which bugs me tremendously.

 

[djbaxter]

You could also try this:

<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js"></script>
<ins class="adsbygoogle"
     style="display:block;max-width:728px;max-height:90px;"
     data-ad-client="ca-pub-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
     data-ad-format="horizontal"></ins>
<script>

 

[bzcomputers]

Did you edit any of your ad units in Adsense? Just re-saving an ad unit, even without making any changes to it, will drop all the current advertiser bids for that ad unit and its' position. Which means you will be basically starting from scratch as far as getting advertisers to bid for that ad unit. If the ad unit has been around for awhile this could have some severe negative impacts on your CPC rates. It can take months to years to regain that all back, if it comes at all.

Also keep in mind it is a new year. All advertising budgets change after the Christmas season. Most Adsense accounts see their lowest income for the year during the month of January (and the highest in December).

Changing from XenForo 1.5 to 2.0 should have little to no impact on your Adsense income by itself. It all the other changes that usually come with a major site upgrade like url changes, http to https, editing an adsense ad unit, changing the css related to an ad, changing an ad size / position / responsiveness etc. That is typically where you will take the big hits.

Edit: By the way the blank ads you see could be related to Adsense not displaying the ad for YOU. If you are logged into your Google account linked to Adsense and Google sees YOU are requesting your own ads they are now more often than before not always displaying them. This will also give you a more accurate analytics. To test log out of Google and try from another IP address.

 

[djbaxter]

Well, so much for my advice above about AutoAds.

I had it working fine for a while on a couple of sites doing it the way I recommended above... until today.

Checking one of the sites just now, I see that AutoAds is once again inserting huge ads just below my logo and when it does that the fixed location ads I wanted to be displayed are not displayed.

Personally, I think I've had it playing around with AutoAds. I just disabled them, for that site anyway. I'll accept the income drop if that's what it takes to stop Google from uglifying the site.

 

[TUG]

Did you edit any of your ad units in Adsense? Just re-saving an ad unit, even without making any changes to it, will drop all the current advertiser bids for that ad unit and its' position. Which means you will be basically starting from scratch as far as getting advertisers to bid for that ad unit. If the ad unit has been around for awhile this could have some severe negative impacts on your CPC rates. It can take months to years to regain that all back, if it comes at all.

i had created a few test ad units for different locations, but the main one remained unchanged from xen 1.5 (the top below breadcrumbs one)...viewing reports in adsense you can see the staggering drop in RPM from that ad unit alone the day of the upgrade and every day since.

Also keep in mind it is a new year. All advertising budgets change after the Christmas season. Most Adsense accounts see their lowest income for the year during the month of January (and the highest in December).

oddly enough our traffic is reversed...and january is the absoute highest traffic/revenue/etc for us...its almost amazing how things change from december to january for us traffic wise...which is why its even more staggering to see these drops in RPM (and revenue) from december to january.

it certainly could be related to advertising budgets, but the other parts of the site do not have the same drop seen post migration, only the ads running on the forum.

looking at the reports for that ad unit, you can see it practically fall off a cliff on the day of the upgrade...and simply never recover.

Changing from XenForo 1.5 to 2.0 should have little to no impact on your Adsense income by itself. It all the other changes that usually come with a major site upgrade like url changes, http to https, editing an adsense ad unit, changing the css related to an ad, changing an ad size / position / responsiveness etc. That is typically where you will take the big hits.

the previous header ad was already a responsive ad, one we have had in place since upgrading to xenforo 1.x from vbulletin years ago....the only change to it was vs having it displayed via a script that determined if a user was a member vs a guest in xen 1.x...and now that same adsense code was simply copied to the "top under breadcrumbs" section of the xen 2.x advertisement feature.

Edit: By the way the blank ads you see could be related to Adsense not displaying the ad for YOU. If you are logged into your Google account linked to Adsense and Google sees YOU are requesting your own ads they are now more often than before not always displaying them. This will also give you a more accurate analytics. To test log out of Google and try from another IP address.

yes, all my testing is done using firefox/chrome/ie on a separate pc not logged in to any email account etc to see the view a regular guest/visitor would.

 

[Wutime]

Not sure if this is helpful, but I usually notice the highest adsense payouts in December (leading up to Christmas), and then quite a fall off in January.

This may not explain your drastic changes, but could be the case for some of the drop-off.

 

[Wutime]

This is the score on mobile of a thread with 3 posts only, Google page speed: 57

Google AdSense is responsible for a loss of up to 30 points

His 57 is probably 80+ if he removed the AdSense code. Which is pretty respectable.

 

[TUG]

Not sure if this is helpful, but I usually notice the highest adsense payouts in December (leading up to Christmas), and then quite a fall off in January.

This may not explain your drastic changes, but could be the case for some of the drop-off.

while i cant discount that, i would think i would see the same drop across all the pages in the same genre (ie our advice articles for instance)...vs only a drop on the xenforo adsense ads.

while I realize we are talking about two different urls/sites....this stuff stays pretty static for us and we have been running ads since 2006 so historical data is available in droves. this is a significant deviation that seems to focus the exact same day as the upgrade and never recovered. if it were just a few % points id ignore it as an abberation and just keep an eye on it to see if it recovered...but such a significant drop warranted more investigation!

 

[TUG]

Google AdSense is responsible for a loss of up to 30 points

His 57 is probably 80+ if he removed the AdSense code. Which is pretty respectable.

this was very eye opening to me...and appears to only impact the mobile side.

looking at those same pages using the desktop render test has all of them ranking in the mid to high 90s.

very frustrating that googles own ads seem to penalize you via their own speed tests.