The death of AdSense for Domains: 2025 in Review
Google’s decision to effectively sunset AdSense for Domains is having a significant impact on the domain industry.
Perhaps the writing was on the wall.
In 2023 and 2024, Google made a number of changes to AdSense for Domains (AFD) that curtailed revenue.
First, it implemented fresh consent requirements for visitors from the EU ahead of they’d be presented with parked domain ads.
Then, Google added restrictions for how parked page ads could be shown.
It got worse. In September 2024, the firm stopped automatically opting fresh advertising accounts into showing ads on AdSense for Domains.
It was clear that Google wasn’t happy with the results advertisers were getting from the AFD product.
These changes took the edge off parking revenue, but I don’t think many expected what happened in 2025: Google effectively shut down AFD.
In February, it disclosed it would opt all existing advertisers out of showing ads on parked domains.
The opt-out occurred in batches. Following the first couple of batches, domain parking firms didn’t see much of a hit. But the final purge in September brought revenue down to pennies on the dollar.
The impact was swift. Team Internet Group laid off 200 employees. Sedo’s revenue plummeted 66% in Q3. Both businesses are now for sale.
Much of the revenue from parking was generated through arbitrage, which requires some sophistication and was not widespread among domain investors. But the entire domain industry is impacted by the death of AFD. Domain registrars made money from parked domains that weren’t in use, hosting firms made money from 404 pages, etc. Losing this revenue will impact how some firms provide their services and how much they charge.
It could also impact fresh top level domains, a number of of which sold batch registrations to domain arbitrage businesses.
For now, firms are finding ways to generate some money from traffic. Some have switched to Google’s Related Ads for Content (RSOC). Others are using Yahoo’s feed. And zero-click is becoming a more common form of monetization, which could be a bad thing.
But none of these are as lucrative or straightforward as AFD.
It will be interesting to see the continued impact this change has on the domain business.
