Clickthrough rate is getting low, why?

[roxpace]

I have always had around 8-12% in clickthrough rate and then suddenly in February/March it decresed to 3-5% at most.

Does anyone know why it is so? The unique visitors is the same as before, well even more now.

I need to get these numbers little higher if possible.

Thanks for all replies in advance :)

[alika]

Possibly "banner blindness" - your users are now so used to the look of your ads that they have learned to ignore it, moreso if you attract a high percentage of repeat traffic. Why don't you try changing its look, color, format or position so it may seem "fresh" to your users and they may be enticed to click on it.

[roxpace]

That was a very good tip, just that my current design doesn't allow much of flexibility with the banner without losing the education purpose of my pages.

[jozomannen]

Omg how do you got a clickthrought rate that high? Or do you have how many of the unique visitors that click or the clicktrought shown on the google adsense-report site?

I have 0.5% clickthrough on google and 1.4% if I count clicks/uniques.

[alika]

If not the ad format, change the colors. You can do that without changing the layout of your page. If it currently blends in the content, make it stand out by choosing contrasting colors. Or try blending the look of the ads with the content. Adsense is pretty flexible in formatting.

[roxpace]

I will try to change the colors and see the difference :) Thanks for the tip!

I dont have high clickthrough, it is low for me. For what I can see it is very different depend on which kind of content and if the ads are very good related to the webpage.

My educational and information giving away sites and pages have the highest clickthroughts even if they has decreased a lot the last time.

The worst pages I have is those with entertainment or news, they are getting lowest clickthroughts.

[JuniorOptimizer]

Kill the ad border.

[roxpace]

But that is not LEGAL according to the approved agreement with Google, or?

[JuniorOptimizer]

Indeed it is legal. It is also the single most dramatic change one can make.

If the font color matches the rest of the page, the background matches the rest of the page, and there's no border, it makes for some very appealing CTR numbers.

You can also put the ad in the middle of articles, word-wrapped by surrounding text.

[roxpace]

Ok, I thought you meant that I should get rid of the entire border, also including the text "Ads by Google". Because that is not allowed, but changing only the colors is ok of course ;)

[alika]

roxspace ... I think it would do you a lot of good if you spend a couple of hours tinkering with the Ad Layout section. For inspiration, why don't you check out the sites featured in Google Adsense case studies, then tinker with various color combinations for your site. You can even customize your colors!