increase in traffic = decrease in clicks?

have a high performing page, wondering if the party will end soon.

[numbchuckskills]

Hey all,

I have a site who's homepage is currently getting roughly 12% click through with a eCPM of $46 - great compared to some other sites.
Problem is that i cant generate any real traffic to the homepage. (gets around 500-700 impressions a day currently)
Before i go crazy trying to get a lot of traffic, has anyone else been in this situation before? My assumption is that once i get some real traffic (in the 1000's) the cpm will go way down along with clickthrough.

Any opinions?

[Aircut]

with increase in traffic google finishes the high paying campaign ads and move to the less paying ones. thus what you see is "increase in traffic = decrease in clicks". this is still with no mention of the smart pricing.... dig this board, alot has been said already

[ken_b]

It depends on how targeted the addirional traffic is. The more targeted, the less likely you'll get a significant drop in CTR.

That's the good news, the bad news is that the traffic has to be spot on equal or better to your current traffic as far as targeting goes to maintain your current CTR.

It doesn't take much of a drift towards the less targeted traffic side to see a significant drop.

[KeywordCountry]

Aircut, I politely oppose you on the point that Google stops giving you high paying ads if your traffic increases. It all depends upon the conversion ratio that you are giving to Google and its Adwords clients. If your site is reputable, Google will be forced to give you high paying ads too. That may also mean that your earnings increase as your PR increases.

Anyways, Yes! Increase in traffic may mean decrease in CTR. But if your traffic is HIGHLY TARGETTED, then CTR will surely increase provided that Google is serving you relevant ads.

Suppose if someone is searching for "Jackets" then there is a small portion of this traffic who might be inteested in "Leather Jackets" Now if this "Leather Jacket" traffic comes on your website and doesnt finds Leather Jacket then it will result in decrease of CTR.

Thats the only reason why niche keeywords are preffered, As they result in more targetted traffic. "Leather Jacket" is a subset "Jackets". Now the traffic searching for "Leather Jacket", most of them might be women! and they wont be interested in Leather jackets that look more MANLY.

Tragedy is, neither Search Engines right now can gauge precisely what the traffic is searching for and doesnt recognizes different segaments of traffic stream coming from same keyword (though "Personalized Searching" - already intriduced in Yahoo and Google are a step towards it), neither many "Made for Adsense" websites are made keeping this fact in mind.

In whole, its lot complex. So, the next time you are making a website, be sure to cover all the keywords possible related to that topic (Jacket, Leather Jacket, Leather Jacket for Men and Women and kids too).

Hope this helps you understand how CTR and Traffic are related to each other.