Are PSA's Counted In Overall CTR?

[damon]

Hello,

Quick hypothetical...

If I have 100 "page impressions" and 3 clicks, is my "clickthrough rate" 3% even if 90 of those 100 "page impressions" display PSAs?

Or are the "page impressions" that have PSAs discounted completely from the "clickthrough rate?"

Thanks for any info!

[richmondsteve]

damon, Google's AdSense reports will display a CTR of 3% - 3 clicks divided by 100 impressions where an impression is an AdSense ad block that was loaded, regardless of whether it displayed AdWords ads, PSAs or publisher-defined Alternate Ads. I said the same thing a different way in another thread - ctr down 50% + [webmasterworld.com].

In my world that's a CTR of 30% - 3 clicks divided by 10 AdWords ad block impressions. I show AAs instead of PSAs and often have a high percentage of AAs so to calculate my "true CTR" and "true impressions" I log views of my AA pages to a database and then adjust Google's reported statistics accordingly. After all, if using your examples I earn $0.45 from those 3 clicks and 10 AdWords impressions and $9.00 from an affiliate sale via an Alternate Ad shown on the other 90 impressions, I want to know my CTR and effective EPM for those separately so I can monitor trends and make informed decisions.

[damon]

RichmondSteve,

First, sorry that I didn't see the post that you referenced. In truth, I tired before reaching that far back (wow, there are tons of posts in this forum!).

Second, thanks for the reference to that post and for an explanation of how you do things. Very helpful. Like Yump in that thread, I've seen my CTR decline about 44% this month. That sharp a decline made me wonder.

Thanks again!