Repeat visitors/active members waste of time?

[glengara]

From what I've read a lot of forums depend on new visitors for their AS revenue and go to the extent of disallowing it to logged-in members, I take it this AS "blindness" extends to all established communities?

[europeforvisitors]

Dunno about "community" sites, but for many editorial sites (such as travel-planning sites, product-review sites, etc.), repeat visitors are extremely valuable. Think about it: The guy who's researching a digital-widget purchase on dpwidgets.com is looking for ways to spend his money, and he isn't likely to make a purchase right away. (DoubleClick's "Search Before the Purchase" study indicated that the average buyer researches a purchase five or six times over a period of weeks before hitting the "order" button.)

[netmeg]

I have a pretty high return rate on my event sites, and my CTRs are pretty good. I think it would hurt if they saw the same ads every time, but as long as there's a pretty good mix, it seems to work okay for me.

[jomaxx]

Yes, at forum sites in particular the CTR goes way down with repeated viewings, and sites don't necessarily don't want the same small group of visitors clicking over and over anyways.

That's why some forums don't show ads to logged-in users. But that's a long way from saying those members are a "waste of time". (Is WebmasterWorld a waste of time?) It just means that you may need a different way of fully monetizing the website.

[farmboy]

I think it would hurt if they saw the same ads every time, but as long as there's a pretty good mix, it seems to work okay for me.

Not to hijack this thread, but has anyone seen any indication that AdSense avoids showing an ad to a visitor who has clicked on the ad previously?

FarmBoy

[europeforvisitors]

I think it would hurt if they saw the same ads every time, but as long as there's a pretty good mix, it seems to work okay for me.

Frequency isn't necessarily a bad thing. Study results vary, but one study showed that the greatest awareness of an ad came after 10 repetitions.

[frakilk]

I recently stopped showing AdSense to forum members as it only accounted for 1/250th of my earnings this year so far.

[netmeg]

Frequency isn't necessarily a bad thing. Study results vary, but one study showed that the greatest awareness of an ad came after 10 repetitions.

Yea, I've seen that, and even used it on clients. But *I* don't like seeing the same ads all the time, so maybe I'm just projecting.

[europeforvisitors]

But *I* don't like seeing the same ads all the time, so maybe I'm just projecting.

On several occasions recently, I've seen the same TV commercials run twice during the same David Letterman station break. At least with most Web ads, you don't have to sit through 30 seconds of repetition!

[mslina2002]

When I frequent forums I am pretty AS blind but visual banner image ads smack after couple of postings always gets my attention.

There is one forum I go to that always has them and although I don't perse 'click' it makes an impression in the mind of the consumer, and after may 10 of so as EFV indicates, maybe I'm tempted....

Personally, I have had no luck with those Adsense image ads but partly because they were not relevant to my site.

[londrum]

if you have a busy forum and you switched those adsense ads to something that pays per 1000 impressions, then you'd be laughing all the way to the bank.

[netchicken1]

I remove most of the adverts for members, its a "thankyou" to people who are helping to build the site that they are not treated as just another form of income.

[Scurramunga]

the average buyer researches a purchase five or six times over a period of weeks before hitting the "order" button

This has certainly been the case for me whenever I have purchased online.

[farmboy]

...the average buyer researches a purchase five or six times over a period of weeks before hitting the "order" button.)

Study results vary, but one study showed that the greatest awareness of an ad came after 10 repetitions.

Those are two different concepts and interesting in terms of AdSense ads.

Someone needing to see an ad a number of times before deciding to click is one thing.

Researching a product a number of times is another. If the person clicks on the ad on my site a number of times over a few weeks, that's a good thing for me but maybe not such a good thing for the advertiser.

However, if the person clicks on the ad on my site once and then returns directly to the advertiser's site to research the product several times over the course of a few weeks, that's a bad thing for me. Showing that same ad to the visitor after the initial click then is a waste of impressions.

FarmBoy