Download Agent Site but low CTR :(

adsense low ctr

[wll6568]

Hi all,

New to this board. Anyway, We are running a download agent site like rapidshare, yousendit, etc. We have daily adsense impression of up to 6000 but the problem is the ctr is less than 1% and daily income is less than $1. :~~~~(

So, I came to this board, willing to hear some of the big experienced adsense player, on how to deal with this. The problem seems like most visitor arent bother to click on the ad. Google seems to be delivering all those "ftp, sharepoint ad" on our site, since we are running file hosting service. Wat do u think we can change the ad content?

Any comment is highly appreciated. Thanks.

[m0nty]

Try adding pages with a lot of text content, like tutorials on how to download, FAQs for the various download tools, software reviews, troubleshooting guides, that sort of thing. AdSense is much more suited to pages with a lot of text, rather than lists of downloadable items.

[moltar]

ya people come download stuff and leave. i never pay attention to the ads on the sites like that...

[ann]

If you would like to change the targeting then filter out the sharepoint ads and use the new targeting feature adsense just came out with to designate the area containng the keywords you wish to have the bot use to target your ads.

good luck,

Ann

[Zygoot]

The content of your site is the main problem. People come to your site to download files. They aren't interested in reading anything and most likely they will just scan your page to find the download link and skip all the rest, including AdSense ads.

Adding more content may help.

[AlexMiles]

>Wat do u think we can change the ad content?

Yeah, you sure can. There are three things to do - in this order..

1) It helps greatly with ad targeting if you have the main keywords in your urls, so you might want to do some rewriting.

I mean instead of..

yoursite.com/asdf?=987-hkjhk-87687.php

have..

yoursite.com/what-this-software-does.htm

Then you get targetted ads instantly.

2) Next you can use that code that tells Adsense which parts of the page to pay attention to when serving ads, and which to ignore. Every bit of code that is the same on each page needs ignoring, and any with product specific keywords needs boosting.

[google.com...]

3) Do you have the Adsense preview tool? If not, download it, and see who would like to advertise on your page. Then you copy the irrelevant URLs and URLs that are the same on every page - put them in the 'competitive filter' section of Adsense, leaving only relevant Ads remaining.

I've never had a download site, but what I would do is put the Adsense on the page people get to see while they are bored and waiting for their software to finish downloading, as well as putting it right under the header of the search results (and at the bottom of the page of search results).

PM me if you want me to take a look at your site.

[ann]

Here is a good thread that may be helpful.

[webmasterworld.com...]

Ann

[elguapo]

Improving targeting works best only if your site is merely the conduit between what the users really want and the advertisers that can potentially serve what they are looking for. Think of a travel information site where users looking for cruise travel to the Caribbean go to your page that talks of tips on what to bring to the cruise, and you serve ads of vendors actually offering cruises to Caribbean. Or a startup entrepreneur reading an article on how to get government grants, and the ads served are companies actually offering lists or books of government grants that may be available to entrepreneurs.

Not a download agent site, though. People go to that site as the end result - that site is all they want. All the users want to do is to download whatever file they want. Those who click do so because an ad simply caught their fancy. Not because the ad is what they are looking for.

There are just some sites that work well for Adsense, and some sites don't. In this case, you can marginally improve your CTR or revenue through optimization techniques, but I doubt if there will be a massive jump in CTR. Your audience visits your site, not for the ads, but simply to your site. You are already giving them what they want. Hence, they ignore your ads.

Your best best is CPM ads. That way you can monetize the traffic that comes to your site, even if they do not click it. I don't know though if Adwords advertisers will want your site for their CPM ads, maybe you'll do better with traditional banner ad networks.