Relationship between CTR and impressions

Do others experience an inverse correlation?

[suidas]

When I chart CTR and impressions against each other I get a queer mirror effect. When impressions dip below the average, CTR goes up. When it returns to the average, CTR goes back down. Put more simply: when fewer people visit, they click more. At the same time the opposite doesn't seem to happen—atypical rises in impressions do not lower the CTR below the average.

My site is both large and Adsense-diverse. Individual sections experience wide and entirely random swings in all statistics, but the aggregate is quite stable. I do not, therefore, think the pattern is meaningless. Something real is going on, but I don't know whether it's about differences in the ads I get, or the visitors I get.

Do others see this pattern? Does anyone have a notion why this might be happening?

PS: If you want to try yourself, be sure to chart running 7-day averages so the noise doesn't overwhelm the trend.

[ken_b]

>>> Do others see this pattern? <<<

Yes. That's pretty much what I see on my site overall. But the end result is a fairly stable effective CPM.

[auseyeidol]

My CTR is highest the days I don't have too many visitors coming from individual sites (ie if I get a link from a bigger site CTR is down). However traffic from a SE clicks through at a higher rate.

Makes sense I guess - people coming to a site searching for something specific are more likely to click on an ad for that thing that someone coming to your site out of general interest.

[ngsmith]

A client of mine experiences something like this but with clicks and conversions. Looked at closely you can see that it is time related.

Weekends = few clicks but more conversions.
Weekdays = more clisks but fewer conversions.

I can imagine (from the nature of the site) that it is normal that people have more time to consider the offering over the weekend.

Neil.