AdSense revenue drop: $1.5K to $218 - Perfect timing with loan due next week

Hey bloggers, this isn't just another "my earnings dropped" post - I'm genuinely freaking out here.

I run a programming tutorial site that I started in my freshman year. Five years of writing tutorials, building code examples, and helping CS students like myself. It was bringing in around $1.5K consistently, which covered my student loan payments and some living expenses.

Today, I logged in to find my earnings have nosedived to $218. My traffic is exactly the same (about 120K monthly visits), bounce rate unchanged, and I haven't made any changes to the site. The real gut punch? My loan payment of $890 is due next week.

What makes this more confusing:

• No manual actions in Search Console

• No crazy traffic spikes or drops

• All content is original (literally my study notes turned into tutorials)

• Been running ads in the same positions for years

Analytics shows traffic source percentages are identical to last month. RPM went from $12-14 to barely $2. Either I'm missing something obvious, or something's seriously wrong with ad serving.

Anyone else seeing massive RPM drops recently? Really need some insights here because instant noodles aren't going to cover this loan payment.

Edit: Should mention - no AI content, no autogenerated stuff. Just pure, hand-written tutorials and code examples from my actual study experience.

Been seeing this pattern a lot lately. Let me check something - are these mainly programming language specific tutorials (like Python, Java) or more niche topics (like specific frameworks/tools)?

The RPM drop from $14 to $2 is a massive red flag that something's up with your ad networks. Check your Reports > Ad Networks and sort by impressions.

I've seen cases where Google silently switches from premium ad networks to lower-tier ones, especially after major updates. Last month I watched a tech tutorial site drop from $80-90 RPM to $12-15 because more than half their impressions suddenly came from bargain-basement networks.

Two things you can do right now:

1. Check what networks currently serve your ads. If you see any with significant impressions but RPM under $1, that's your problem

2. Look at your most profitable pages from last month - see if their individual RPMs tanked or if they're just getting fewer impressions

Don't panic about the loan just yet. Lot of sites got hit like this in the past week - might be related to the recent algo changes. Keep us posted on what you find in those reports.

Just checked the Ad Networks report. My top networks from last month are barely showing any impressions now, while some low-paying ones I've never focused on before are taking up most of the traffic. The RPMs are absolutely terrible.

My content is mostly Python, JavaScript, and some Data Structures stuff (basically what I studied each semester). The pages that were making $40-50 per day are now making cents. Same traffic, just... worthless ads.

How does this even happen? Like, my content didn't suddenly become low-quality overnight. These are literally the same tutorials that were doing great for years. Students still find them helpful (my comment section is pretty active with thank yous).

The weird part is that when I check individual ad units, some are completely blank now even though they show as "serving ads" in the AdSense panel.

Question is - will blocking low-performing networks help? Or will I just end up with no ads at all? Really need to figure this out fast.

Let me break this down since I've dealt with similar situations:

Ad Revenue Drops - What's Actually Happening: Your traffic stayed the same but RPM tanked. This typically means Google is serving different quality ads to your site. This isn't about your content quality - it's about ad inventory.

What You Can Do Right Now:

1. Go to Reports > Ad Networks

2. Order networks by impressions

3. Block networks giving you significantly low RPM (we're talking under $1) with high impression counts

4. Wait 24-48 hours for normalization

Important: Only do this if you notice a sudden dip in RPM. I monitor mine and only make changes when I see drops from my average (say $12 RPM suddenly becoming $4).

About those blank ad spaces, this is actually normal during network transitions. Give it 24 hours before making any more changes. Sometimes Google tests different networks on your site - they'll stabilize.

Loan Situation: Consider reducing ad placements that might be causing accidental clicks. Focus on high-viewability spots. This sometimes helps signal better ad quality to Google's system.

Things that come fast go fast, but things that come slow tend to last longer. Focus on the fundamentals, and your RPM will recover.

The same for me (although not as drastic)

I assume it can be caused by deprecating 3rd party cookies in Chrome browser (https://developers.google.com/privacy-sandbox/blog/cookie-countdown-2023oct)

They were used to track user's activity on different web sites, thus allowing ad networks to serve behaviour-based ads. Behaviour-based ads are more personalised and way more expensive.

I did expect RPM drop late last year and it started descending in December

Holy shit, this actually makes sense. The cookie deprecation thing explains the RPM drop - seems like advertisers can't track users across sites anymore, so they're not bidding as high on ad spots.

Just read through that developers google link. Apparently this started affecting 1% of Chrome users from January 4th, and they're planning to roll it out to everyone by Q3 2024? So this isn't just a temporary glitch - it's going to get worse.

My loan situation still sucks, but at least now I understand why this is happening. Guess I need to start looking into these "Privacy Sandbox" alternatives they mention.

Do you know if these alternative APIs will eventually bring RPMs back up, or is this the new normal we have to accept?

Yes, it's a permanent change, but I believe RPM will gradually recover - advertisers still have the same budgets and those budgets are still distributed across the same web sites. It's just a period of turbulence is going on.

As of privacy sandbox I'm not very sure if it's already a standard or just still a request for proposal. What may help is implementing a consent management solution (See Menu -> Privacy and Management in the Adsense UI). I personally haven't done it yet. I never wanted to have those annoying cookie banners on my sites, but if the revenue does not recover I'll have to do

Jumping in with some relevant data here. We're seeing the exact same pattern on our client sites - traffic up 140% since December (which is unusual), but revenue in absolute freefall.

@tech_wizardry @artem.v.bogdan you're both onto something with the cookie changes. But there's more - check your Adsense page views against Analytics. Our Search Console shows record traffic, WordPress shows record traffic, Analytics shows record traffic... but Adsense is reporting all-time lows in traffic metrics.

It's like two systems are completely disconnected now. Pretty sure it's not just the cookie deprecation, but also how Adsense is failing to properly count these new traffic patterns.

For reference: Our tech blog went from $15-25/day to barely $4-5, despite traffic literally being up by almost one and half times. Something fundamentally broke in how Adsense handles traffic reporting this January.

@tech_wizardry - I know you need a quick fix for that loan, but from what we're seeing across 12+ client sites, this isn't something that'll resolve in days. Might want to start looking at those backup options people mentioned.

@artem.v.bogdan You seem to have a good grasp on these privacy sandbox changes. I'm getting a lot of panicked mails lately about revenue drops - would you mind sharing more about what publishers should expect through 2025?

I'm particularly interested in what you mentioned about advertiser budgets staying the same. If the targeting becomes less precise due to cookie deprecation, wouldn't that naturally lead to lower bids across the board?

Just trying to help our community prepare for what's coming.