Preferring site target ads over contextual

[Burningcoals]

My site has two different areas...a large, very active forum and an archival database of quality content related to the forum but not consisting of forum archives. The forum provides 2/3rds of 3 million+ page impressions per month but obviously a lower CTR compared to the archived content. Historically my CTR has been very low (.05%) yet I have earned a "healthy" monthly income. That's changed since late July when my eCPM has declined by 70%.

It seems to me that, due to the large forum which generates a lot of the site's page impressions but a low CTR due to a set number of visitors reading many pages, that site targeting ads are actually better for me. Am I wrong in that conclusion?

[ecmedia]

Site targeting lowers CPM for small websites - only premium websites (like New York Times, where everyone wants to advertise) benefit from targeting.

[europeforvisitors]

1) Beware of generalizations about site-targeted ads.

2) If your site doesn't lend itself to contextual CPC ads, you might want to consider display banners, skyscrapers, or blocks (whether sold direct, by a rep firm, or by a vertical ad network if one exists in your sector).

[BigDave]

Site targeting lowers CPM for small websites

I don't get a lot of site targeted ads, but when I do, they have always paid more than an average impression (you have to compare the eCPM with impressions, not page views).

I suppose that you might get hurt on it if you have specific pages that earn significantly more than other pages.

[Burningcoals]

I hope I've gotten the nomenclature correct. I understood site ads to be Pay-per-impression versus contextual which is Pay-per-click. I searched the webmasterworld.com site for topics pertaining to putting advertising on large forums but didn't find much. Forums produce large amounts of traffic (mine does, at least) but typically have a low CTR due to the visitors being repeat ones rather then "fresh" so they end up seeing ads over and over again.

If my site gets 70+ million individual ad impressions a month, site ads which pay per impression seems more profitable than contexual ads. I've read where people have asked Google to turn off the site ads but I wonder if they would turn off the contextual ones.

Thanks for all the comments!

[BigDave]

Unless you have a lot of people bidding on your site, turning off contextual ads would just lead to getting PSAs. If you do have lots of people bidding for CPM ads on your site, why not sell some direct for the forum, and only running AdSense when you don't have stock.

[annej]

I wouldn't mind site targeted ads if they fit the topic on a given page. But that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm much happier with only the contextual ads served up by AdSense.