How to troubleshoot a drop in Adsense earnings

Question

About a year ago, I set up a simple product page on my website that describes my product and contains a download link, and I added a AdSense block to the bottom. During that year, all key metrics (number of visitors, impressions, active views, clicks/CTR) for this page stayed the same, and so has the AdSense revenue.

But there has recently been a sudden drop in clicks/CTR, by about 50-70%, and a subsequent drop in revenue. It has been happening for over a month now with no apparent reason: the page content has remained the same, the number of visitors and their device types has been constant, I haven't touched any AdSense settings, my product is not seasonal in any way...

How do I find out the reason for this sudden drop in revenue?

Answer 1

A sudden drop in ad revenue is usually caused by a change in advertisers. If some advertiser stops buying ads that frequently appear on your site, it can cause a sharp sudden drop. Other ads that replace it may not be as compelling to users and may not pay as much.

You can usually see this in your AdSense stats with a sudden drop in click through rate (CTR) and/or a drop in effective cost per click (eCPC). Unfortunately Google doesn't give you any reporting at all into which advertisers are showing on your site over time. There is usually nothing further you can do to diagnose the situation.

Many sites have also experienced slower declines in revenue caused by a number of factors:

• More users on mobile instead of desktop. This causes clicks and CPC to drop over time.
• Google taking a larger share of the revenue for themselves.
• More users installing ad blocking software.
• Repeat visitors to your site developing "ad blindness." They get to know where your ads typically appear and learn to ignore those spots.