Where do you look when your CTR plummets?

[Christopher H]

Two of my sites have exhibited awful CTR over the past few weeks and I'm scratching my head somewhat. Originally they were filled with lots of irrelevant ads but that appears to have slowly sorted itself out. Traffic is fairly constant, yet no-one appears to be clicking the links. I have another site in the same niche that is doing just as well as it has always done, it receives similar traffic and has similar ads.

So I'm asking for advice from any other publishers out there who've had this problem in the past, where do you look and what steps do you take when your CTR takes a nose dive for no apparent reason whatsoever?

[nomis5]

Make that 336 x 280 for me as well, over all my sites.

Try it. Try it. Did I repeat myself? Yes intentionally. Try it.

[IanCP]

Based solely on a 36 hour trial, has something going for it.

[IanCP]

Based solely on a 36 hour trial, has something going for it.

[HuskyPup]

Tried it out twice did you IanCP? :-)

[doubtmaster]

Guys.... CPM and CTR.... this is a problem... from advertiser perspective....

Once upon a time, there was only Adsense... but now everyday a new competitor is starting... Bidvertiser, Adbrite.... are just ones who started a bit early, but now there are 100s.

Now the problem here is Adsense charges for CPM while many of the Adsense competitors do not charge for CPM, but only for CTR or even worse, some only charge for CTA. So from Advertiser perspective he "thinks" he is saving a lot of money when he is running on non Adsense networks.

However, my experience is that if Adsense is not very transparent, others are far worse. Is there a mechanism to find out if these Ad companies are fooling or not? I am not sure about it.

I had Bidvertiser Ads and Adsense Ads on the same page with Bidvertiser Ads at more prominent places. With Adsense, when I make more than $50/month on the same pages, the total Bidvertiser Ad clicks showed 5-6 clicks for 2 months! (The only difference is that I have been using Adsense from 2 years while Bidvertiser Ads have been placed only 2 months earlier. So were they smart-pricing me ?)

Many people have given negative experience with Bidvertiser... some even trying to click their own ads from outside system once or twice to experiment.

What I feel is other Ad companies may not be giving publisher as much as they should be getting and may be there are companies who do not pay publisher for every click. If a company cheats a publisher, then why would the same company not cheat Advertisers also ?

In conclusion, Advertisers may be running after less-known new Ad companies who seem to show better savings on paper... but in reality the Advertisers may be not even getting what their Ad is worth. So though they think they save on CPM while using other networks, they may be actually getting cheated.

So between the Advertiser and Ad networks, it is the publisher who is facing the brunt of not getting ads or not getting paid for impressions or not getting paid in spite of CTRs or CTRs not being recorded.

[jkovar]

First thing I look at is whether the drop correlates with a rise of repeat visitors.

I find the more often someone comes around, the less likely they are to click ads.

[IanCP]

Tried it out twice did you IanCP? :-)

Must've, because over the last three days that's been the net result.

Double income. Almost olden day respectable levels, well around 12 months ago.

Now when is this euphoric news going to fall into the predictable "AdSense Black Hole". Shouldn't post this the AdSense Gods might get angry.