Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It didn't help my EPC though, which are worse than ever, although they flattened out when I went to banners.
but that's about double of my CTR ;)
If you can't get your text ads to perform better than your image ads, you may want to work on your page design.
For a while I thought I was doing okay; then I realized better page design could double income.
Navigation can play a bigger role than many people think. Design it well, and visitors will click on the good pages with Adsense.
p/g
The Glitch that stole Christmas!...KF :o)
As you've seen in the posts above, some sites generate CTR in the 2.5% or even lower range. There are also members of this forum who have reported CTR's in the 20's, 30's and even 40 per cent range.
It all depends on your topic and market sector.
Now, if you could compare all sites in a niche --same markets, same type of content, etc, etc --- then you might have a comparison that meant something.
The good part of your experience is that you have raised your CTR by a point.
...click to visits ratio...
Do you actually mean a click to visits ratio?
And if so, do you mean all visits, or just unique visits?
Or do you really mean clicks to pageviews?
Or clicks to ad impressions?
I actually mean clicks to total *visits* per Analytics. My fledgling social networking site gets multiple visits per day from some visitors, and multiple pageviews are very likely. If my users click out quickly then they are probably not engaged in the site, and unlikely to return often, but I want them to click out on an ad and not just visit some other site. I get Page CTR of around 1% but it seems 5-6% of my visits result in ad clicks, so that is good, but is it better than average? The ads appear to be very relevant but repetitive.
Lower ad link unit performs at about 1.5%.
8% to 6% overnight is a real kick in the ass for us. I understand completely that a lower CTR getting rid of accidental clicks is better in the long run - but the real problem is the CPM has dropped with it, which doesn't make much sense to me. You'd think it'd be the opposite.
In the end all we can do is work on traffic to the site and hope to make up the shortfall on volume.
The Glitch that stole Christmas!...KF :o)
The Glitch topic has been going on so long it's starting to remind me of the Marilyn Monroe movie, "The Seven Year Glitch"
If I calculate my click to visit ratio, then it comes out to somewhere around 4%.
My older site that only generates around $200 monthly has a CTR and click to visit rate that is almost EXACTLY the same, both near 5%.
I wonder if Smart Pricing can be triggered by too high of a CTR?
Not necessarily, not from my experience. CTR is somewhat of a meaningless metric with regard to smart pricing. It's indicative of many different possible things going on, either positive or negative. But CTR is not the thing itself that is going on and subsequently influencing smart pricing.
What counts is what visitors do once they clicked through to the other site. A better metric would be if they consistently click away quickly from that other site, meaning either they did not intend to visit the other site, or they visited it with intentions other than making a purchase- such as downloading images or wanting to get away from your website. A high CTR with a positive follow-through on the other site is a good thing. The focus should be on user intention via query or link used to visit the site, plus intention when they click out on an ad.
It's possible that a very high CTR% could be seen as a lack of relevant content.
Depends on what you mean by relevant. A high CTR may mean that the query a user used to reach your site has a high match to the ad they see displayed on your site. That is a good thing. What you have to focus on is why people are clicking those ads. Are they clicking to get away from your site, or is it to buy a widget?
I would say that a low CTR is more indicative of a particular pages relevance for a query that is far from shopping related. That is, site visitors are there exactly for your content and nothing else beyond it. For instance, if you have a page for free widget templates, why would someone click an ad to pay for a widget when the page they're currently on is giving it away? Or another example, if someone is on your web page reading about esoteric science or looking for an image of a celebrity, why would they click on an ad? Your page is relevant for gossip about the latest model Bruce Willis is dating, great. Your ad is relevant for Bruce Willis movies on eBay. Fine. But the user intention is not there. No happy hour for you. :(
In my opinion, focusing on CTR is latching on to the wrong metric altogether. It's like noting tiredness as a symptom of bad health, when in reality it could be a symptom of a vigorous work day filled with plenty of walking. You have to look at user intention, the focus of your content, and how they complement the content in the ads.
