BwanaZulia - 10:24 am on Mar 26, 2004 (gmt 0)

So it has been a week (of collected data) and while it is not enough data yet to make any changes yet, it has provided some interesting insights.

Since I use a very dynamic web applications server, I just made one channel each of my 5 sites and dropped it in the ad serving software. I didn't change anything from a look and feel aspect and overall the aggregate hits have been right on target for this month.

The channel data is WAY off from what I thought

- The biggest site (cars), with over 61% impressions had 43% of the clicks had only 33% of the revenue. Also has the lowest CTR
- The second biggest site (community) with 30% of the impressions had 20% of the clicks and 23% of the revenue. Also lowest CTR.
- The third biggest site (travel) has just 8% of the traffic, with 27% of the clicks and 35% of the revenue. Yup, it earned more than the other two big sites and has a CTR 4 times the other two sites.

Now, to be fair that last site has a leader board and the first two have normal ad banners (468x60) but the CTR is just way out of line.

It is way too soon to tell whether this is the industry, the banner size or the quality of ads, but has made me think about which sites are more "valuable" than others.

What have you learned?

BZ