Page views almost doubled but earnings going down

[WilliamRayWalters]

In my eyes it just shows that there are still too few advertisers.

Well, this is like half dozen of one, 6 of the other. Not enough advertisers, too many videos, same thing really. Advertising isn't down though, not according to Google's quarterly report. And while they don't specifically detail Youtube's earnings, it is not unreasonable to think that if Google advertising overall is up, that Youtube advertising is up as well.

 

[markkaz]

Have you checked to see if your big increase in views is coming from a country with poor CPM's? Brazil is the region with my 2nd highest number of views but the CPM's are 1/3 of USA.

 

[WilliamRayWalters]

Have you checked to see if your big increase in views is coming from a country with poor CPM's? Brazil is the region with my 2nd highest number of views but the CPM's are 1/3 of USA.

I don't know about the OP but my percentages from US and the second and third ranked countries giving me views is almost identical to last year, yet still over 50% drop in RPM.

 

[chottom]

Indeed the main increase is due to Japanese views (around 1/2 of US ads revenue) but the US traffic (2nd main source) is unchanged. The main reason for decreased earnings is significantly decreased CPM of both Japanese and especially US ads.

 

[Crown]

The first thing I said upon hearing that the floodgates had opened a couple years ago to allow anyone to be a partner was that it would gradually dilute the market because there are many more videos being created than there are ads to go around. It seems like that change is really starting to show, now that we should be getting to a time of year where RPM is much better and we see it's not happening. There's not much we can do about it. I'm hoping that November and December are still strong but I'm not holding my breath.

I definitely agree that the supply of ad space seems to be outstripping the demand for it from the advertisers, thus driving the prices down. I think this dilution has had 2 distinct phases:

1) Existing channels being allowed to monetize regardless of size or quality of video.
2) New channels being created by people who would never even have bothered with YouTube if they couldn't make money from it. - I think it's this second phase that has done the most damage. Not only has it reduced RPM, but it has also reduced the quality of content IMHO. I mean how many top 10 compilation channels does YT need lol !? There has been a huge influx of copyrighted content too and many of them don't get strikes. Stuff like TV shows from 10 years ago - that sort of thing. It's all over YT and they all have ads on them. There's no way people would have bothered to rip and upload this crap if they couldn't monetize it.

 

[WilliamRayWalters]

There has been a huge influx of copyrighted content too and many of them don't get strikes.

I don't care if people get into Youtube just for the money, but when it's spammy content then it becomes a problem. If you go to blackhatworld (for example) you'll see guys who use Youtube purely to try to game the system by downloading peoples videos en masse, reuploading them, and monetizing them. Still, I'm not sure what percentage this type of content make up of the overall video uploaded to youtube or if it is even statistically meaningful. Even without these issues I think we'd be facing an advertising dilution problem.

Who knows. I'll just hope the last quarter of this year somehow improves.

 

[Partnership hero]

I don't care if people get into Youtube just for the money, but when it's spammy content then it becomes a problem. If you go to blackhatworld (for example) you'll see guys who use Youtube purely to try to game the system by downloading peoples videos en masse, reuploading them, and monetizing them. Still, I'm not sure what percentage this type of content make up of the overall video uploaded to youtube or if it is even statistically meaningful. Even without these issues I think we'd be facing an advertising dilution problem.

Who knows. I'll just hope the last quarter of this year somehow improves.

I believe this is exactly why Youtube has started to apply their new rules to MCNs.

 

[Sk Jony]

According to our Adsense we have almost doubled the page views (on year to year bases) but the earnings are significantly lower (again on year to year bases). I know that such things are to be expected but still kind of disappointing. I was just wandering if some of the older channels observe similar tendency (BTW it started during the summer).

I faced same problem after my first payment, what is the solution of this situation. I hope we needed any expert user comments.

 

[XXLRay]

you'll see guys who use Youtube purely to try to game the system by downloading peoples videos en masse, reuploading them, and monetizing them.

These people usually use other monetization methods (survey scams, paid links, ...) than monetization. The reason is that AdSense is pretty good in controlling who gets access to their system.

 

[Crown]

2014 was of course an exceptional year for advertising. There was the winter olympics and also the Football (soccer) World Cup, arguably the biggest international sporting tournament that only comes around every 4 years.