adsense on forums, how bad could it get?

what kind of CTR can I expect?

[AffiliateDreamer]

Hi,

owning a very busy forum of say 15 million page views with 200-300K uniques per month, how low of a CTR should I be prepared for?

I realize that there is no better way to find out then to test it out, but I want to gauge what others on here have experienced (preferrably on very busy forums). And please if you can add some general ideas on where you placed your ad(s).

is a CTR between 0.5% and 1% a safe bet? ie. can it get even lower than .5%?

[bbunlock]

well I dont have a forum of your size but hope this helps

I have the letterbox add at the top of the page, I get on average 20,000 page views a day and average of around 1,000 visitors a day the average Page CTR is 0.3%

Now depending on how you have your forum setup will depend on the adds? for instance on sections on my forum where you need to be logged in to see that section you will find that the adds seem to be nothing special or they display adds for password recovery and I imagine thats becuase the google adsence code cant get access to the page.

If however you have your forum so that a quest can see the posts you will see more relivant adds for that topic.

hope this helps

[ken_b]

I'm pretty sure I've seen reports here of forums with a CTR in the .02 range.

[vordmeister]

0.2% on a forum can be quite good.

The trick with forums is to display the ads to unresistered users only. I have a fairly good CTR doing this. I use an irritating banner ad at the top, and have a little note close to it saying "log in or register to remove the ads". (I understand from previous posts on this forum that this is acceptable).

I don't bother my forum members with adverts.

[finoo]

I'd say 0,2 - 0,3 if you show the ads to guests and members.

Thats my experience :)

[scottct1]

I am doing about a 1.2 - 2.1 CTR Rate on my forum. Doing about $100 a day or so in earnings so i can't complaign even though I wish the CTR was higher.

I am now working on expanding my site to offer more then just a forum in a hope I can bring up my CTR higher.

[AffiliateDreamer]

It must really go on uniques as well, as i'm sure return users are less likely to click on the ads as oppose to a new unique user.

15 million pv with 300K uniques is 50 page views per user, which means allot of return visitors so CTR will sink.

but even at 0.1 % CTR (15 000 000 * 0.001) = $15K/month

[sallam]

I used to have CTR of .1 or .2, but now its around 4.0
thats how I did it:

- one banner ad showing above the fold, in the middle of the fold, with almost nothing else showing, except a 'welcome to bla bla forum' at top. You have to scroll down to see everything else.

- make sure only guests see that ad.

btw, the above setting was reviewed by adsense support and got their Ok.

[Bddmed]

but even at 0.1 % CTR (15 000 000 * 0.001) = $15K/month

Assuming one click is $1. I think that 'll be very unlikely on a forum.

[shortbus1662]

depends on where you place the ads. I changed mine up and quadrupled my click through rate.

[AffiliateDreamer]

Bddmed, I just realized before getting back on the computer my calc was for the # of clicks, not payout oops!

so its 15K clicks, payout will vary on payout per click.

[Nicke]

I used to have a CTR of 0.1-0.2% on my forum, when the ads were located on the right side of the forum.

When I moved the ads to the thread content it increased to 0.4-0.5%, and with heavy traffic it make a huge difference.

So keep the ads within the content instead of outside the content, as I did in the past.