Forum ads low CTR-- better to dump them?

Forum has lots of impressions, but low CTR...

[uhwebs]

I get about 1,000 visits/day, and about 60-70 clicks.
I just (today) put some ads in my forum, which didn't have ads before. The impressions shot up-- from about 5,000 to 9,000+... but the CTR for the forums is pathetic (3 clicks today) and is bringing my whole CTR down.

Will a low CTR hurt my earnings or price per click? Is it better to remove the forum ads if they continue to have such a poor CTR?

[uhwebs]

*bump*

[John Carpenter]

Is it better to remove the forum ads if they continue to have such a poor CTR?

Well, we too had low earnings from ads on our forum pages. Since many people dislike forums with ads (let alone forums where ads are inserted after every first post in a thread -- which we didn't do), we didn't think it was worth it keeping them.

Surprisingly, day after we removed the ads the overall earnings went up significantly and stayed at the level (we removed them a couple of months ago). However, I think it was probably only a coincidence. (Maybe not, just experiment and see what happens.)

[edited by: John_Carpenter at 3:18 pm (utc) on Aug. 12, 2005]

[willmullis]

Try modding the code so that is only shows the ads to Guests. If you have alot of guests browsing you will discover the CTR is much better.

[hyperkik]

I get a very low CTR from forum users who are logged in, but a respectable CTR and eCPM from visitors who are not logged in. You may wish to play around with displaying ads differently based upon whether or not a user is logged in, to see if it improves your returns - in my experience, people who are "just looking" are also by far the most likely to click a contextually relevant ad.

[uhwebs]

That is a good idea!
I guess my other question is-- will a low CTR hurt my earnings at all?

I will have to find a mod that will do that. I'm not that experienced with modding the board... Just did it for the first time the other day :)

[jcmiras]

why use CPM base ads?

[uhwebs]

Will having a low CTR make my earnings go down? I mean, will I get fewer cents per click if my CTR is really low?

[Radejr]

I woulda think abotu doing the same, but about 50% of my earnings come from my forums and the other 50% from the site.

[dzcap]

I think the CTR affects the per click rate, at least it did with me.

[NoLimits]

I originally thought that CTR had an impact on my EPC, but I am now balancing out the poor CTR of my forums with lots of content pages (bringing the overall CTR up substantially from what it was 2 months back) - and I am yet to see an increase or decrease in EPC that I could say beyond a reasonable doubt is a result of the CTR change.