Anyone else experiencing a sudden drop in AdMob revenue?

Hello,

I'm not sure what's going on, but my New Users numbers dropped by 20% from one day to another, and so did the revenue. This new low is continuing today.

I didn't contact Google yet, but I wonder, if anyone else is experiencing anything similar?

Thanks.
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Comments

  • I have the same experience. Since the beginning of the month, Admob revenue is not good =(

  • Hey guys.
    I get a small drop in impressions (less than 5%) but I also get a big rise in eCPM, so my revenue is slowly going up again.

    Maybe it was a temporary glitch that caused the problem you experience? If it persists, try contact Google.
  • The eCPM was also high for me, I just lost the traffic (now the eCPM as well). I hope that this had something to do with the elections. :) If it will persist, I will definitely contact Google about it.
  • I too see a small but noticeable los in traffic but I think it is because advertising budget was spent in October because of Halloween etc... And everyone is preparing for black Friday/December. Just my opinion :)
  • I seem to be having an average month. October was extra good for me, with a Halloween app that did really well. Compared to that, it is a drop, but it's more like back to normal.
  • I haven't had the time yet to check each app's stats, but the earnings and total download numbers have dropped about 10% (up from initial 20% drop). I hope to get back to the previous levels soon.

    But good to know that it's not something universal.
  • i think we need a over haul of ad networks, we need more support from andromo
  • @hendrixs ;
    im experiencing this sudden drop too.. and about 30% loss of everything.. also ive been browsing a lot and from other peoples exp its not just admob, in general its also from adsense.. also there have been some irregularities from adsense this month.. i think it has something to do with whats happening.. any insights yet? hows it going since the last time u posted?
  • @naqshbandi:
    I think the available ad networks are not a problem. We already have the consistently highest paying banner and interstitial ad networks (AdMob, FAN, Amazon) and some others, which are also highly regarded.

    Maybe a new way if monetizing would be interesting to add. But, like you may have seen, I've opened another thread, where I described our initial success with Vungle (rewarded video ads) and then it bombed. The problem is that EVERY "alternative" ad network promises you the kingdom of heaven, but the reality is often very, very different.

    I believe it would be helpful, if anyone here has a good experience with a certain ad network (over a longer period of time) to post the recommendation on this forum.

    We're now going to try two other ad networks (Fyber for offerwalls and AppLovin for rewarded video ads) and I'll let you know how it goes.

    @megajmarketing
    Thankfully, the weekend was back to normal. Let's see how the next week will pan out. I wish you luck as well!

  • Can u guys share some of your apps for ideas ;)

    I am new and will be great to see what kind of apps u are creating.
  • Yes. 10 to 20% drop in admob revenue. Discouraging when last year it was our two best months - November and December.
  • Shit now im worried... will this ever go back to normal?
  • Last 2 months, extreme increase of admob eCPM, CTR and revenue for me. We are talking about 75% increase of revenue since August.
    Also for FAN - eCPM ranging between 5 and 10 USD. Believe it or not, FAN is better than admob now by 30-40%. But one should take in account that its fillrate is still not good.
  • fill rate is really important, thats why i still wont replace my admob or join them together since admob has been really great for the past 12months.. but ill do observation for next 3 months and if this will continue to fall, i might just replace the interstitial with FAN
  • edited December 2016
    If you combine FAN with admob, fill rate will not be troubling you because andromo chooses an ad network randomly and then moves to another if the network cannot fill the request.
    We are not talking about replacing admob interstitials (or other units) with FAN. Don't do it, many requests will not give an ad, FAN has at maximum 55% fill rate!

    Adding another ad network on the side also has other advantages, one of which is that users will see some new ads, new style ads, new graphics ads. This will diversify your app since it will not be bringing up constantly the same ads in looks and feeling. They will be more eager to click an ad that is new to them, either in style or in content.

    I will give you another example: weeks ago I decided to try Applovin interstitials. I put it in 2 apps I got, along admob and FAN (so of course I didnt get enough applovin impressions and I cant really report on revenue since it was too few impressions). However, what I can report on is CTR - applovin is well known to produce nice looking ads. I got a 20% CTR! This means users saw something new and exciting and clicked on it.

    But honestly, FAN is hot right now. It's not like I am pushing a referral link or something, I just express my own results which are astonishing.

    Once again thanks to Andromo for adding FAN!
  • @keithco: I too am experiencing lower revenue (after going back to normal for a couple of weeks), but it's mainly due to lower number of new users. The eCPM and everything else is remaining normal.

    @anteos: That's so good to hear! Funny thing, I too saw some crazy increases on my secondary account - not as much because of the traffic, but because of higher eCPM's. Strange stuff.

    I have it on my to-do to add FAN to some of my low eCPM apps. Thanks for mentioning it! I'll hurry up. :)
  • I looked at last year and the total earning dollar drop from last year on admob was solely due to a drop in "Impression RPM" which is the dollar rate that the advertisers' are willing to pay is 1/2 of last year. 

    I still like admod and use them exclusively and they fill almost 100% every day and the additional income is nice. I still only use banner ads since I'm very conservative in not wanting to lose users and one of users biggest complaints on reviews of competing apps is that there are too many ads. 

    Thanks for the feedback everyone. 
  • edited December 2016
    Hm, maybe that could be the reason for the drop. When I talked to the App Specialist from Google, she said, that the ad inventory is rapidly moving from banner to native ads. On the long run, banner ads will be replaced by native ads.

    On my JV account, we're already testing natives as banner ads, but since our main markets are BR, IN and TR (not by our choice, it just happens), plus we're using them in newer apps with less downloads, I can't tell the difference in performance between banners and natives yet.

    I would not worry too much about using interstitial ads. A friend of mine has a very popular game with a rating of 3.9, but it's constantly being featured by Google, and the AdMob rep told him (long ago) to go more aggressive with ads. I was told them same a while ago.

    If the content is good, people won't mind the ads. I have an app with an average rating of 4.6 (1+ mio users) and it's the most heavily ad loaded app (on "strategic" places, not all over the place).
  • To hendrixs: What is the main difference between banner ads versus native ads? And it's tough to add full page ads to Android apps that don't have an entry page or an exit page, isn't it?
  • Here you have a short presentation of native ads:

    Native ads can be designed and used in multiple formats (dimensions). Banner ads are just banners and nothing more.

    Native ads are not available yet in Andromo, but that's not necessarily a drawback at the moment. From what I see, if native ads are used as banners, they can't be resized to multiple screen dimensions, like banners ads are (if implemented correctly - Andromo used "smart banners" way before most publishers did know about them).

    But I guess AdMob will fix that, because natives are still very new. It's just like their AMP technology for faster mobile site loading - it's great, but still with many bugs.

    It's not hard to add full page (interstitial ads) to Andromo apps. It's implemented by the policy rules, so you're 100% safe using interstitials. Andromo has been always great at following GP policies.




  • I went from about 1500-2K impressions a day down to 30 to 50 if I am lucky. I don't know what happen as my app is still getting downloaded by the same number of people each day so who knows. This Oct 18th from looking at reports in AdSense



  • That's very strange. I'd contact Google in your place. I hope you get it sorted out.
  • edited January 2017
    I noticed a few drops that I found explanations for.

    One was after Google made some changes to Google Play, when users searching for apps, instead of getting a list of apps are now getting the strange categories for similar searches, where less popular apps are far less likely to appear (for instance if you looked specifically for a music player I made, they'd get "popular for meditation music", "popular for podcasts" instead of straight up list of apps, where my app was, so now it's not easily findable).

    The second one is related to the typical January low ad revenue drop:
    http://problogschool.com/ad-revenue-dropped-january/

    Third one is a hostile 1-star review that dropped one of my apps down in search results, which led to around 40% less installs.

    Same amount of users but far less impressions only sounds like some issue with mediation or campaigns overtaking ad serving, if you have any campaigns set up or manually messed with admob settings. For instance, if you set CPM floors it might mess things up if cpms seasonally drop, but many other things can go wrong there such as a campaign getting requests but not displaying a certain ad (thus no impressions for that ad), amongst many other things I've seen with Admob not working as expected when changing its settings from defaults.
    The only way to check if this is the case is to change settings to default/suggested and pause campaigns.

    Not sure if any of those apply to you, just a few ideas that I personally experienced.

  • Answer to that 1 star review, politely, explaining why it happened, giving instructions to contact you for solving the matter at once. It helps if users see a reply to a bad review! Just a fast thing I wanted to add.
  • seriously this drop trend on admob is making me really uncomfortable, worst start for the month and i dont know where this will end by the end of the month..
  • @megajmarketing: Are you experiencing drop in users, eCPM or both? I don't have any worries about eCPM, but I am noticing a long-term drop in new user numbers (for my most popular apps).
  • @hendrixs traffic and impression is still the same but eCPM really low.. not sure now what to do to make everything go to where it was, i just know somethings really going on in admobs part.
  • If it's just the eCPM, there's nothing really that you can do. It will get better, no worries.
  • hope so.. how about u other guys reading this thread? experience?
  • Just some perspective from someone on the advertising buying end of things, our spend always goes down in the first few months after Christmas. People don't have as much money in Jan, Feb, even March until they catch up. Paying big bucks to advertise to people who can't purchase is the domain of very large companies, and there just aren't that many of those in the end. Just my own experience, but it's been consistent for years and years.
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