What is the difference between estimated and finalized earnings in AdSense?

This post was most recently updated on January 18th, 2023

Publishers often don’t understand why their ad revenue on their AdSense report differs from their actual earnings. In this post, we’ll look at possible reasons and what to do about it.

During each month, earnings get updated and shown on your AdSense dashboard. Once AdSense finalizes earnings, publishers can see the ad revenue owed to them on the Payments tab.

However, more often than not, the AdSense team discovers invalid traffic, impressions, and clicks. As per Google AdSense policies, advertisers will not get billed for invalid clicks. It will not result in any direct action on their ads and are fraudulent. If this is the case with your account, you’ll get a revenue clawback, and there will be a difference between your estimated and final ad earnings.

It could be that you only receive a revenue clawback due to invalid traffic. However, you could also lose your AdSense account. If the latter happens, all the ad revenue you’ve accrued in the account will be forfeited and paid back to advertisers.

When checking earnings keep the following in mind:

Estimated earnings

-This shows the total estimated earnings and is not final.

-Google states that in most cases, estimated earnings do exclude most invalid traffic and clicks

-Often there is an end of month update that adds unearned revenue to the estimated earnings amount, which can create a discrepancy between that and finalized earnings.

Finalized earnings

-This shows the current balance of earnings that needs to be paid out, and the most recent payment received.

-This amount is also subject to change.

What to do if you’re losing ad revenue due do invalid clicks/activity?

If you thought losing ad revenue due to invalid clicks is bad, think how bad it would be to lose your AdSense account. Although possible to get it reinstated, it’s often an uphill battle, and most publishers don’t win their appeals. We’ve previously written about some basic tips Google provides to prevent invalid click activity, but that will only get you so far.

Thankfully we’ve developed a tool that can help you protect your AdSense account and prevent your business from losing money because of invalid clicks called Traffic Cop! By using machine learning and fingerprinting algorithms, Traffic Cop can detect invalid traffic and, at the same time, prevent it from clicking on your ads.

As a result, you dramatically decrease ad revenue clawbacks, and even better, protect your AdSense account from getting banned!

Are you ready to stop invalid traffic and clicks dead in its tracks? Sign up for Traffic Cop today!

Kean Graham

Kean Graham is the CEO and founder of MonetizeMore & a pioneer in the Adtech Industry. He is the resident expert in Ad Optimization, covering areas like Adsense Optimization,GAM Management, and third-party ad network partnerships. Kean believes in the supremacy of direct publisher deals and holistic optimization as keys to effective and consistent ad revenue increases.