Impact of Responsive Ads on AdSense Income

With a responsive ad layount, has your AdSense income changes?

  • I'm earning LESS with responsive ad layouts

    Votes: 13 65.0%
  • It's about the same, responsive ads have not affect my income

    Votes: 5 25.0%
  • My ad income as actually INCREASED with responsive ads

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20
  • Poll closed .

MikeMpls

Well-known member
Have you noticed a change in your AdSense income after you placed responsive ad layouts on your XenForo site?

In your comments, please also note if you are using Brogan's approach (conditional statements) or the Responsive Adsense Beta Units.

I'm about to start upgrading my 3 major 1.1.x sites that generate the income the supports this insane hobby and would like to learn from others have done here.
 
I'm using the beta ad-code and so far have seen a 40% drop in revenue.

I'm still getting the same page views / impressions, so I'm wondering if it's simply down to the fact that I've just created these new ad slots and they haven't been targetted yet?

We'll see how things are at the end of the month.
 
I don't think 1.2 and responsive design has been in place long enough to give this an accurate answer. One thing to keep in mind is the time of year. Summer is a slow time for me and my site doesn't really get back up to full steam until November.

IMHO, little tiny ads on little tiny screen do not add up to big $$$. But at least you're still getting traffic, and that's what it's all about.
 
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I don't think 1.2 and responsive design has been in place long enough

This suggests another consideration: If ad revenue is changing, is it because of a responsive ad layout or the responsive nature of the design? For this it would be helpful to hear from those who've upgraded to 1.2.x without changing their ad layouts (a control group, so to speak).

that's what it's all about.

What it's all about is paying the bills that add up to 4-digit sums every year. It's a business and I try to run it as a business as much as possible.
 
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Interesting thread. I'll share my data when I convert my site from vBulletin next month. Around 27% of my traffic is from mobile devices.

For those of you who have switched, if you filter your ad slots by size, it should be straightforward to compare eCPM rates between the 728x90 and 320x50 slots. If the smaller banners are earning less per impression, then I think it's fairly safe to say you're losing money compared to what you would earn if you were showing everyone "full-size" pages, sending 728x90 banners to mobiles.

However, Google has recently made changes which require advertisers to run mobile ads when they purchase any AdSense campaign, and I suspect other large ad networks will follow suit. This should help eliminate eCPM discrepancies between 728 and 320 banners over the long run.

Regardless, I don't think lower responsive ad revenue should discourage anyone from running a responsive site (and yes, my site is my business, too - not a hobby). Mobile usage is skyrocketing and will continue to do so. Unless you want to hand over the future of how people interact with your site to a Chinese company like Tapatalk, give your visitors the very best mobile experience that you can. They'll reward you with high engagement, lots and lots of page views, and eventually more profit.
 
Adsense dropped >50% when I activated a third party Responsive design last year. Then I was using conditionals to serve 3 different sized ads. Now I'm on native responsive using Adsense responsive but with little change (still lower).

I've been hoping that it was some other Google change that caused this as I also saw significant traffic drops during around this time and read about a big Google hit on 11/17 last year. Decided not to change any more variables and ride it out to see what happens - Sometimes I can kick myself for making changes to something that's working well...
 
Wow, >50%? Is that your overall eCPM rates or earnings?

How significant was your drop in traffic around that time?
 
Over 50% drop for me as well. I blame it mainly on the responsive design and missing out on precious mobile clicks on larger ad units.

XF has become too user friendly now :)
 
My guess is that most all companies will have a difficult time monetizing the small screens as well as we all have the bigger ones!

Luckily, much of the "mobile" traffic comes from tablets - some fairly large.

Personally, I almost never respond to or click on ads using my iphone. I don't know what the eventual solution is going to be for that traffic.
 
60% of my user's are using mobile.

I think yours related to a more worldwide audience, etc....and, you really do have to dig deeper and check out the screen resolution. It's likely that anything over 1000 is a tablet, which IMHO is not as "mobile" in terms of advertising.
 
I think yours related to a more worldwide audience, etc....and, you really do have to dig deeper and check out the screen resolution. It's likely that anything over 1000 is a tablet, which IMHO is not as "mobile" in terms of advertising.
I can Identify my user's base on analytic's, forum topics and personal chat's on shoutbox.
30% using OperaMini Java/Symbian version with their screen resolution 240x320 and 320x240 usually.
30% are using Android phones
10% are using Tablets
Rest are using Desktop which is average of 30%.
 
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