Did AI-Generated Content Contribute to the Decline in AdSense Revenue?

In 2023, AdSense revenues experienced a drastic drop, plummeting by up to 90%. Coincidentally, that year also saw a massive influx of AI-generated content, which led to a dilution of ad impressions and, consequently, a decrease in Cost Per Mille (CPM) rates. As a result, my daily AdSense earnings have dwindled to 30 cents, despite my website generating between 1,500 and 3,000 page views per day. This stark decline forced me to abandon the idea of earning through AdSense, marking a complete failure after a decade of previous success. The dramatic fall in CPM rates raised suspicions of manipulation by Google, especially given that its advertising revenue continued to rise while publishers’ earnings dropped tenfold.

While I don’t discount this theory, another plausible explanation could be the deluge of low-quality AI content that flooded the web in 2023. The revenue decline began in 2022 but became significantly worse in 2023, fueled by scammers who published hundreds of thousands of articles within months. This glut of content inevitably diluted ad impressions, causing a structural decline in CPM rates. Google’s March 2024 update, which resulted in the harsh penalization and deindexing of many sites, seems to be an attempt to address this issue and restore order.

The situation is reminiscent of past incidents where major tech companies manipulated metrics to deceive advertisers. For instance, in 2017, Facebook was found to have inflated video view counts by factors of 10 or 20, misleading advertisers about the effectiveness of their investments. Despite the fraud, Facebook’s settlement of a mere 40 million dollars did little to compensate for the long-term impact on global video CPM rates.

The core issue remains the lack of transparency and access to the algorithms and advertising ecosystems. Without this, publishers and advertisers will continue to face exploitation.

More read: Google Core Update + Spam Update March 2024