Forum Moderators: martinibuster
CompWorld
Some also have an average CTR, but will often have a fluctuation of +5% CTR on certain days of the week (ie. after a newsletter is sent to "remind" people of the site", or just on heavier traffic days)
Yes, I know discussing CTR is against the AdSense terms. However, I only moderate for the WebmasterWorld TOS, not AdSense.
Oh shoot! now I've discussed discussing the Google TOC. Hope they don't take away my beachtowel.
Average seems to be in the 1.5% to 3% area
With respect, there is no way of knowing the average. If you are talking about the average of the figures bandied about in WW then they are wildly inaccurate as any indication of what Adsense CTR is across the board.
Are you allocating any weight to the size of the site or the number of impressions? (Obviously a site with 100K daily impression having a CTR of 4 taken together with a site doing 50 page impression/day and a CTR of 3 doesn't make an average of 3.5)
True there are some cases where people get 20%. I have a very healthy two digit CTR myself. But I don't understand the obsession with CTR. Webmasters get into Adsense for the value of the cheque, not a high CTR. Is it the case that some webmasters feel a sense of accomplishment when they see an "average" CTR below theirs? I don't know. But we seem to get so many threads with questions like "What's your CTR". There was one just yesterday: [webmasterworld.com...]
(Obviously a site with 100K daily impression having a CTR of 4 taken together with a site doing 50 page impression/day and a CTR of 3 doesn't make an average of 3.5)
Wrong - According to the stats Adsense provides it is one and the same.
But I don't understand the obsession with CTR. Webmasters get into Adsense for the value of the cheque, not a high CTR.
The checks I receive have a direct relationship with the CTR and I think most people are having the same experience.
Really, I don't understand your gripe. No matter how you slice it a lower CTR = a smaller check.
With respect, there is no way of knowing the average
No, I am not referring to just what has been posted on WebmasterWorld, because I have had plenty of discussions with other publishers off of the boards as well. Some aren't as secretive about it won't get back to Google.
It is everyone's choice whether or not to share CTR, but people are a lot more open about it they know their usernames are not traceable back to their AdSense accounts, or that the source would not be divulged publicly.
The checks I receive have a direct relationship with the CTR and I think most people are having the same experience.
I agree. Someone might have a .5% CTR and think it is absolutely fabulous, and what everyone else must be earning - but by knowing the average is 1.5% to 3%, he or she could then work to get to that average.
quality of YOUR visitors.
quality of Targeting ads by GOOGLE.
quality of creatives by ADVERISERS.
different industries have totally different missions, creatives and targeting issues.
there are many publsihers with 10% + CTR, and I know of at least 1 publisher with 0.4% (me), so averages mean jack...
Shak
It really makes no sense to worry about the CTR and EPC others are seeing since EPC varies by page context and CTR varies by a large number of variables, but I admit that I do pay attention to numbers others report, though I don't fixate on them or make decisions based on them.
Right now I have a site where AdSense is displayed on about 25% of the page views. I don't display ads on the pages representing the other 75% of page views because they'd either displays alternate ads (PSA replacements), generate low effective CPM or be obtrusive. If maximizing my EPC was my goal I'd remove from all but a single page. If maximizing impressions was my goal I'd add AdSense to the other 75% of my page views. If CTR was my goal I'd match the ad block border, ad block background and site background colors, match the ad block link color and site link color, make the ad placement obtrusive, remove all other exit links and menus and alienate my users.
But that's not important to me so I give the users what they want, make continuous improvements and implement tested changes and don't worry about specific metrics like EPC and CTR. To each his own!
According to the stats Adsense provides it is one and the same
It's not. Adsense may give a CTR for each site but Adsense does not aggregate a CTR figure across all publisher sites. So mathematically your calculation is flawed if you do not account for disparate site sizes.
The checks I receive have a direct relationship with the CTR and I think most people are having the same experience
Most people... nay, ALL Adsense publishers don't have any "experience" or "relationship" with CTR. What they earn is a function of a variety of factors. CTR is just one of them. Comparing avearage CTRs across vastly different sites is an exercise in futility.
I have had plenty of discussions with other publishers off of the boards as well
I agree 100% with Shak, and I couldn't have put it in better words.
Richmondsteve has the right idea:
It really makes no sense to worry about the CTR and EPC others are seeing
The type of page and how often a user visits make a huge difference.
A message board with content that spans the fold and is visited by a core group of users who make frequent visits will tend to have a very low CTR. After all, users are there to read and post messages and after 5 visits a day, 5 days per week, 20 pages per visit that's 500 pages per user per week and even if the ads didn't scroll out of view they'd be redundant. I have a client with a high-traffic niche message board and a month long AdSense test yielded a CTR that was a fraction of the CTR generally associated with banner ads. It didn't help that the client used AdSense banner ads, put them above the fold and that the same group of 4 ads were shown all month, but the AdSense program was a poor fit regardless and the client executed it poorly against my advice (in addition I suggested testing on their niche content site, not the forums).
A page jammed full of affiliate ads, layed out poorly, with AdSense code below the fold, tons of poorly layed out content and poorly targeted AdSense ads that are of little interest to the user will tend to have a low CTR.
An information based authority which receives one-time visitors referred by search engines, has a usable design and high quality content, well written ad copy and ads for services and products directly related to what the user was searching for will likely have a *much* higher CTR.
I have clients with sites like the first two examples above and clients (and myself) with sites like the third example above and the third type tends to have CTR rates 5-20 times those of the first two examples. In my experience these differences in CTR are no different than CTR for affiliate programs in general. CTR goes up when the users are interested in the services/products advertised, the ad copy is well-written, the site is well-designed, the ads are well-placed and the users are in search mode or are willing to switch to search mode.
Is it making any money now you have added google adsense
YES
End of Story
why worry what anyone else is doing, just be happy with getting something for nothing
ncw164x
Adsense may give a CTR for each site but Adsense does not aggregate a CTR figure across all publisher sites.
Also, CTR as reported by AdSense reports is misleading at best, worthless at worst. It's clicks of paying ads divided by all ad block impressions which means clicks of PSAs and alternate ads aren't counted (which is fine and alternate ad clicks couldn't be tracked by them anyway), but to be useful and accurate PSAs and alternate ad impressions should not be counted towards impressions. And if they are counted they should be split out in the reports as AdSense paying ad impressions and other impressions.
This may seem like a minor issue for those who have PSAs and alternate ads making up only 5-10% of total AdSense impressions (or think that's the case, but aren't actually using alternate ads and tracking), but I'm aware of plenty of sites where the percentages are in the 30-80% range and publishers who don't factor that in and/or ignore revenue from the alternate ads can make bad decisions (and in the case of some of my clients change "can" to "are"). Just food for thought.
Nevertheless, I completely understand why people like to know. After all, a webmaster can take steps to increase it, and is one of the few things that is within our control. After all, we can't control how much people are willing to pay.
Dave.
Wow, we're 0.2 to 0.3 ish, and even then Google isn't registering anything near half of what we actually do in PIs, from the server stats.
PI? Page Impressions? See What is a page impression? [google.com] and Why do I detect a different number of page impressions than what shows in my reports? [google.com] from the Google AdSense FAQ.
When taking the factors mentioned into account I have found my own impressions from Apache raw logs to be nearly identical to those reported in the AdSense reports. I say "nearly" because my server's timezone is offset by 3 hours from Google's and I haven't had the desire to adjust the times reported in my logs to compare.
If we worked on the presumption that all sites are created equal, all ads positions generate the same CTR, all advertisers have exactly the same advertising budget and bid exactly the same amounts for all keywords... then Shak, UKFord etc are dismal failures. And people like me with CTR in the double digits are some sort of gods. I don't subscribe to that view.
As Shak says:
averages mean jack...
