Adsense revenue approaching zero

Col_Kilgore

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I have a Youtube channel that's about six months old. I started doing pretty legit type promotions but slowly drifted to more piratical waters. One result of that was the traffic source became less targeted thus my links were certainly spammier. But I'm thinking the really huge difference was the demographics. I was driving traffic off social media and it became primarily third world traffic.

So I noticed my RPM began declining quite dramatically. It was really stable at around $1.75 or so, but with very little daily traffic. Still the $1.75 figure was achieved over something like 5k views, so I know it wasn't some crazy random outlier. Anyway once the demographics started leaning towards low income countries the shift was quick and major. Within weeks my RPM dipped below $1.

About a month ago I stopped actively posting links but I was still getting residual traffic of 100-200 views per day. This is when RPM really started to plummet. It declined in roughly linear fashion to just $.15 RPM.

So then I post this vid that's unexpectedly blown up (shout out to that Adrian dude :)) and I get 1400, that's 1400, views, 33 impressions, not one single click. Something ain't right in Lagos. My weekly RPM is currently sitting at six cents per thousand impressions.

My questions

First, the video I posted recently that's gone sub-viral obviously has something very wrong with it. Monetization is enabled and the "page views" are correctly showing up in adsense analytics but no one's clicking on ads and its not serving anywhere near the number of ads it should be. Does adsense ghost, shave, or pull any other surreptitious BS that they don't tell you about but that causes you to earn zilch?

Second, if this is real let me just restate the magnitude of this decline: my RPM went from $1.75 to $.06 when approximately 75% of my traffic shifted to third world demographics.

If this whole thing is accurate that may be the single most chilling argument I've ever seen against mass immigration. This isn't a statement that these economies and by extension the people in them (I'm just restating Google's own cold calculation) are merely worth less, it's an unequivocal judgment that they are worthless. Worth nothing. Complete economic non-entities.

I'm just restating this unpleasant conclusion because a) google, Zuckersperg et al are some of THE biggest active proponents of open borders for the US and Europe and b) it's frankly just hard to believe. Keep in mind about 25% of my traffic is still first world. By this calculus they are quite literally saying this third world traffic, over a large sample, has ZERO VALUE.

If that's true, or anywhere near true, and they know it, it lends serious credibility to the most outlandish and toxic conspiracy theories in trolldom.
 
Try to check once in YOutube analytics section > Revenue column.
 
I don't know what mass immigration has to do with your conclusion.
An indian has less purchasing power because life cost less in india. Rent, food, clothes. -> it drop the CPM because announcers selling clothes will have less absolute margin than in USA. Might keep the same relative margin that is proportional to the price of the product.
An indian coming to USA will have more money. It will have a salary in USA, meaning it will have more purchasing power. When an indian is visiting your site while in USA, you'll get the USA CPC. and mass immigration is a drop in the population. Will not shift price lower.
 
Try to check once in YOutube analytics section > Revenue column.
I don't think that updates for days. Ok, so today its actually showing me at $.36 RPM so far, a major improvement. But I've been doing this and watching it long enough to know for a fact that 1400 views at $0 RPM is smoking-gun proof of some kind of serious shenanigans or a serious error. But the vid has been up now for the better part of a week so it doesn't seem like it should be any kind of update issue. Like I said I've watched this stuff daily for 6 months and the last two weeks some really weird stuff has started happening and, low and behold, it resulted in them not owing me anything. Hmmmmm.

I'm not sure I follow you. You're against mass immigration because third world country doesn't pay revenues? That's plain fucking stupid.
Do you realize that an indian coming to USA will be considered as american when clicking on your ads, meaning you'll get a normal CPC cost?
Do you realize that the percentage of immigration is a drop in the market? It will in no case affect the cost of you CPC in YOUR country.

I hesitated to post that because people might somehow take it personal. FWIW I am in the US and every Indian I know is a brilliant workaholic. Indians (subcontinental) are the single highest earning group is the United States, which is a remarkable fact. All of that is due to self selection of the extremely talented though.

Am I against mass third world immigration personally? Yes, on common sense grounds, namely I don't want to wake up living in http://noorimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/ZIF099SE0003.jpg[/url] . But that's not the point I'm making.

It doesn't mean sh*t that one Eritrean can come here, join a cohort of US mouse clickers, and be counted at US CPC rates. What matters is if you change say, the state of Minnesota so that it's 75% Eritreans then the algorithm will eventually be updated and will converge on the Eritrea CPC.

The overall point however is I simply don't believe it. I think I'm getting shafted somehow. I think clicks from Lagos Nigeria are probably worth a hell of a lot more than $.06. BUT, if I'm wrong it paints an ominous picture when the exact same people who invented the algorithms that valuate third world commerce as worthless are the main proponents of open borders. And they aren't just proponents, they actively lobby for it as with the H1B visa program, pay Hillary 250k to preach about it etc.
 
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I don't think that updates for days. Ok, so today its actually showing me at $.36 RPM so far, a major improvement. But I've been doing this and watching it long enough to know for a fact that 1400 views at $0 RPM is smoking-gun proof of some kind of serious shenanigans or a serious error. But the vid has been up now for the better part of a week so it doesn't seem like it should be any kind of update issue. Like I said I've watched this stuff daily for 6 months and the last two weeks some really weird stuff has started happening and, low and behold, it resulted in them not owing me anything. Hmmmmm.



I hesitated to post that because people might somehow take it personal. FWIW I am in the US and every Indian I know is a brilliant workaholic. Indians (subcontinental) are the single highest earning group is the United States, which is a remarkable fact. All of that is due to self selection of the extremely talented though.

Am I against mass third world immigration personally? Yes, on common sense grounds, namely I don't want to wake up living in Kibera[/url] . But that's not the point I'm making, which you seem to have badly missed.

It doesn't mean sh*t that one Eritrean can come here, join a cohort of US mouse clickers, and be counted at US CPC rates. What matters is if you change say, the state of Minnesota so that it's 75% Eritreans then the algorithm will eventually be updated and will converge on the Eritrea CPC.

The overall point however is I simply don't believe it. I think I'm getting shafted somehow. I think clicks from Lagos Nigeria are probably worth a hell of a lot more than $.06. BUT, if I'm wrong it paints an ominous picture when the exact same people who invented the algorithms that valuate third world commerce as worthless are the main proponents of open borders. And they aren't just proponents, they actively lobby for it as with the H1B visa program etc.

What you don't seem to understand is that the price of the click is based on an algorithm, I agree with you, but not just randomly.
It's all about the announcers. If you have announcers that want US traffic from a particular niche, it will simply put the ads of all US viewers on this particular niche. It just doesnt care about the rest of the world & clicks. It's targeted advertising.
If I watch your video (I'm in France), I'l get served with probably french announcer, high or low CPC, but totally independant from the other viewers.

What matters is if you change say, the state of Minnesota so that it's 75% Eritreans then the algorithm will eventually be updated and will converge on the Eritrea CPC

This is definitly not how the algorithm work. It's based on location and language of the navigator.
if 75% of your viewer are speaking Eritrean and living in minessota, they'll be served with ads paid by an announcer that target this population. The 25% left, speaking english, will probably be targeted by another announcer.

PS: You can't analyse real CPM with that low amount of traffic. It will fluctuate. Try and get 10K views a day, or even 50K to have accurate averages.
 
What you don't seem to understand is that the price of the click is based on an algorithm, I agree with you, but not just randomly.
It's all about the announcers. If you have announcers that want US traffic from a particular niche, it will simply put the ads of all US viewers on this particular niche. It just doesnt care about the rest of the world & clicks. It's targeted advertising.
If I watch your video (I'm in France), I'l get served with probably french announcer, high or low CPC, but totally independant from the other viewers.

Yeah I understand that, but you're saying that its possible that they basically didn't find a single ad to locally geo-target over 1400 views? The problem with that is I've been watching this stuff over six months and my traffic makeup hasn't changed that much over the last 3 months or so. But the RPM started tanking two weeks ago.

This is definitly not how the algorithm work. It's based on location and language of the navigator.
if 75% of your viewer are speaking Eritrean and living in minessota, they'll be served with ads paid by an announcer that target this population. The 25% left, speaking english, will probably be targeted by another announcer.

Yeah we're on the same page there.
PS: You can't analyse real CPM with that low amount of traffic. It will fluctuate. Try and get 10K views a day, or even 50K to have accurate averages.

Ok I can sort of buy that but the daily variance in RPM prior to two weeks ago was no where near what would allow for a dip to $.06 over an entire week and 2.5k views. In other words I might have expected the weekly RPM to be $1.25 or $1.75 if the average was $1.50 but not $.06. That would be like being on a Quantas flight that crashed then getting struck by lightening twice on your way to the hospital.
 
Ok I can sort of buy that but the daily variance in RPM prior to two weeks ago was no where near what would allow for a dip to $.06 over an entire week and 2.5k views. In other words I might have expected the weekly RPM to be $1.25 or $1.75 if the average was $1.50 but not $.06. That would be like being on a Quantas flight that crashed then getting struck by lightening twice on your way to the hospital.

Well, As long as you don't have clicks, if you're on a CPC based campaign, you won't receive any money, then won't see an increase in CPM.
This mean that the main announcer that was on your videos maybe stopped his overpaid campaign, that wasnt bringing him anough ROI, or just that he ran out of money, and your left with low paying campaigns.

But once again, I don't see how it has anything to do with immigration honestly.
 
Well, As long as you don't have clicks, if you're on a CPC based campaign, you won't receive any money, then won't see an increase in CPM.
This mean that the main announcer that was on your videos maybe stopped his overpaid campaign, that wasnt bringing him anough ROI, or just that he ran out of money, and your left with low paying campaigns.

So adsense is set up so that its actually possible for no bidder to purchase ads to be served to 1400 views? The impressions count was extremely low so that would seem to indicate ads just weren't getting served.

I thought adsense was pretty much like the stock market though with almost infinite liquidity. So that if you can generate significant traffic, say over 1k, you're pretty much guaranteed to be matched up with an advertiser bidding for that traffic, even if the price is very low.
But once again, I don't see how it has anything to do with immigration honestly.

My point is that if the recent Adsense valuation of my traffic is accurate, it means that Google, who along with other tech companies are the biggest active proponents of open borders, are consciously advocating transforming the US economy into smoldering wreck. The people who are worth $.06 RPM won't be credit worthy and won't be buying cars, iphones, or anything else. Again, I think the $.06 number is complete BS. There's no doubt third world commerce in general is less valuable than first world commerce, but not anywhere near that differential.

TL;DR Zuck, Google et al say "import the Great Third World Working Masses to build our economic juggernaut" when they themselves are the purveyors of the data which says there's no such thing as the Great Third World Working Masses. There's only Kibera.
 
So adsense is set up so that its actually possible for no bidder to purchase ads to be served to 1400 views? The impressions count was extremely low so that would seem to indicate ads just weren't getting served.

I thought adsense was pretty much like the stock market though with almost infinite liquidity. So that if you can generate significant traffic, say over 1k, you're pretty much guaranteed to be matched up with an advertiser bidding for that traffic, even if the price is very low.


My point is that if the recent Adsense valuation of my traffic is accurate, it means that Google, who along with other tech companies are the biggest active proponents of open borders, are consciously advocating transforming the US economy into smoldering wreck. The people who are worth $.06 RPM won't be credit worthy and won't be buying cars, iphones, or anything else. Again, I think the $.06 number is complete BS. There's no doubt third world commerce in general is less valuable than first world commerce, but not anywhere near that differential.

TL;DR Zuck, Google et al say "import the Great Third World Working Masses to build our economic juggernaut" when they themselves are the purveyors of the data which says there's no such thing as the Great Third World Working Masses. There's only Kibera.


I think your assumptions aren't based of enough metrics to draw a conclusion.
Your video, based on keywords, length, monetization choice, havent met bidders. It's common. and 1K views is nothing but significant unfortunately.

CPM drop for third world countries has NOTHING to do with google once again, it's all about who pay for advertisement, and how much. Google is a platform that put in relation advertiser and publisher, they do not chose the CPM. If no indian company had decided to target your keywords, you just won't be served ads. If someone targeted the whole world for .01CPM and it's the only advertiser available for your video, they will be picked. It's not infinite liquidity, since it's getting even more and more targeted, based on the content your produce.
 
CPM drop for third world countries has NOTHING to do with google once again, it's all about who pay for advertisement, and how much.

Since these metrics appear in Youtube and Adsense analytics though, Google is the one collating them. Since they're the ones presenting the statistics, there's no possible way they're ignorant of them or their implications, that's all I'm saying.
It's not infinite liquidity, since it's getting even more and more targeted, based on the content your produce.

That's interesting and quite different than how I pictured it being. edit: i see your points above though. I sloppily stated that "they invent the algorithms that valuate" when it would have been more correct to say "they invent the algorithms that allow advertisers to valuate through bidding".
 
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The problem is that your videos suck. 99.99% of Youtubers make squat and it's not worth your time.
 
The problem is that your videos suck. 99.99% of Youtubers make squat and it's not worth your time.

Lol, actually my vids do suck (well some of the content isnt bad but the videos themselves definitely suck, hard). But I was actually considering learning to make better vids, but from what I'm seeing unfortunately what you say looks spot on.
 
this debate is getting quite interesting. lips sealed.
 
You say you only got 33 ad impressions and not 1 click? Why are you surprised your RPM is only .06, especially if from Nigeria?
 
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