Drop in CTR

Dramatic recent fall in Click through rate

[glitterball]

This is becoming really frustrating, but I'm persevering.

I have a several sites, but my highest profile one has suffered a dramatic fall in CTR in recent times.
I look after four Adsense accounts, two of which are well up on last year, and one of these accounts has several websites that are directly comparable to the one that has suffered the drop in CTR (same demographic, advertisers and theme, only slightly different location).

I have experimented by changing just about everything available to me - position of Ads, Colours and all of the setting available through my Adsense account.
While some changes have produced an initial (and dramatic) increase in CTR, it always returns to the same low CTR after 2-3 days.

One difference between the accounts is that my high profile site has a large amount of placement targeted Advertisers, whereas there are no placement targeted Advertisers in the other 3 accounts.
Blocking all of the placement targeted Ads seems to produce an increase in CTR (back to the same level as it was consistently at for 5+ years), but this always drops off again after a few days.
This has got me thinking that firstly Google is using information from the placement targeted Ads to help target Ads and secondly that some Advertisers are abusing this system to place Ads that will deliberately generate a low CTR in order to get free branding.
e.g. A chain store with outlets in New York and Los Angeles would target New York sites with Titles promoting its Los Angeles stores.

The second major difference is that the two accounts that are performing well (I have no data for 2009 on the fourth account) belong to companies that are located in a different country to the badly performing one (even though the target audience doesn't differ).

Perhaps I am clutching at straws, but I will consider any suggestions at this stage - my CTR initially dropped by 50%, but has now dropped to half of that again. This is a very clean site - #1 for a very competitive term and also hosts the biggest forum related to that topic (and, no, I don't run Adsense on the forum).

[StoutFiles]

Does anyone ever consider that CTR rates will continue to drop due to ad blindness?

[glitterball]

Does anyone ever consider that CTR rates will continue to drop due to ad blindness?

That is a long term trend - it doesn't account for a sudden drop.

[Play_Bach]

Today CTR is nearing an all time low. Anybody else?

[drall]

CTR has been dropping all year for us at a gradual decay for the most part but several drops had been quite sharp. Few channels I still have running adsense are now 50% of the 7 year average for CTR.

I think its all the interest based junk which I have witnessed first hand. Lets say you have a site about fishtanks and I have been looking at sites about lawn mowers, well when I visit your fishtank site I will see lawnmower ads.

We went through the same thing, tried hundreds of positions, colors blahblahblah. None of it mattered because well the ads are no longer targeted to our content per unique user.

Personally I think it destroys the very meaning of contextually targeted ads that compliment your content:)

[iridiax]

I think its all the interest based junk which I have witnessed first hand. Lets say you have a site about fishtanks and I have been looking at sites about lawn mowers, well when I visit your fishtank site I will see lawnmower ads.

I think that interest-based ads might be a big benefit to larger, more generalist publishers (like news sites) that have had ad targeting problems in the past due to their extremely wide range of topics and difficult themes (crime reports, disasters, tragedies, etc.). Interest-based ads may be less beneficial to smaller, more highly focused niche publishers that already had well-targeted, on-topic ads.

[AndyA]

Obviously, Google needs to give us the option of turning off interest-based ads on our sites. The opt out function offered now does not do this, it just prevents Google from using data from visitors while they're on the site, it doesn't prevent them from seeing interest based ads.

I think the "one size fits all" business plan Google currently has for AdSense is not a well thought out plan. Google should offer publishers the option of opting their site out of interest based ads for all site visitors while on the site.

The publisher will be able to tell in short order what works best for their particular site. Problem solved.

[londrum]

thats not going to happen i dont think. because all that does is make the publisher more money.

having the advertiser's ads appear on as many sites as possible is better for google, because it drains the advertisers budget quicker. they're not going to take a knock on profits just to increase ours.

the only reason they'd change it is if publishers start dropping out and using other ad services. but whilst google's got a near monopoly (especially outside the US, where MS and Yahoo don't let us Europeans in) they don't have to listen.

[glitterball]

thats not going to happen i dont think. because all that does is make the publisher more money.

Surely if the CTR rate is down, then Google is making less money as well?

One of my sites probably is benefiting from the Interest-based Ads (it attracts a very diverse audience), so I wouldn't change that, but it would be nice to turn them off on my more focused sites.
If Google did decide to give us the option of opting out of the Interest-based Ads, it would be nice if we could do it on a per-Ad basis rather than apply it to an entire account.
We could switch them on for our Forums and low-conversion pages, but keep them off of our more-focused, high-conversion pages.

[londrum]

CTR is down for us. but the ads are probably appearing on ten times more sites than they were before, or a hundred times more. or a thousand more. so the number of clicks is way up for google.

[HuskyPup]

they don't have to listen

Yeah...they allow European advertisers but not publishers...just why is that?

Not enough inventory or just keeping 100% for themselves?

They'll never get more advertisers if the advertisers can only see Google ads on my sites and I'm sure a lot of other widget trade sites are like this.

[netmeg]

My CTR is way down. But my eCPM is way way way up, so net I'm doing better, and probably Google is too.

I've come to the conclusion that trying to micro-manage AdSense into better CTR or differently targeted ads or just about any kind of better performance is a waste of time. Once you've done your testing to determine the best layout, blending strategy and color scheme for your site, anything else is just like shooting darts at mosquitos. You might effect a minor rise for a day or two, but it almost always reverts. There are just plain too many things outside of your control, and you don't have enough information to really determine whether spikes up or down are a result of something you're doing, something Google is doing, or something the advertisers or visitors are doing.

The endless tweaking will drive you stark raving nuts; trust me.

[glitterball]

I've come to the conclusion that trying to micro-manage AdSense into better CTR or differently targeted ads or just about any kind of better performance is a waste of time. Once you've done your testing to determine the best layout, blending strategy and color scheme for your site, anything else is just like shooting darts at mosquitos. You might effect a minor rise for a day or two, but it almost always reverts. There are just plain too many things outside of your control, and you don't have enough information to really determine whether spikes up or down are a result of something you're doing, something Google is doing, or something the advertisers or visitors are doing.

Yeah, I think that you're right.

I tried the last 24 hours with 50% of the ads running from a different Adsense account that is based in another country - the CTR was even worse, so I think I'm going to rule out Adsense Account Country as being the source of my problem.

I can't figure it out - I know that the Advertisers are still there, they are just not appearing on my site. The most depressing thing is the sheer amount of totally irrelevant Ads appearing - they couldn't be interest-based as I have never expressed an interest in these places that are on the other side of the world to both my target audience and myself.

I've switched 50% of my inventory over to affiliate Ads and I'll continue to watch how this develops.

[HuskyPup]

The most depressing thing is the sheer amount of totally irrelevant Ads appearing

It's quite bizarre at times.

I know for a fact when I strike-up my laptop at home, open up my browser and go to my widget trade directory home page that I can guarantee there will be a 728 x 90 and a 160 x 600 image ad from Dotster...as soon as I refresh they'll disappear never to be seen again until the next time...and I mean EVERY damned time I start that browser

I assume it can't be interest based since I use Firefox and Opera with cookies off and I haven't even been looking for anything remotely to do with Dotster stuff and bear in mind it's for that machine only, no others!

[Sally Stitts]

Prior to April 1, 2010, I had never received a daily CTR of less than 7% (5 years).
After April 1, 2010, I have never received a daily CTR above 4%.

EXPLAIN THAT!

I have studied all the possible reasons. Not one rings true. After eliminating the impossible and improbable, only one possibility remains - funny business. Something got broken, or a dial got twisted.

I am starting to have pretty good luck with Chitika - far better than YPN was. I should have switched much sooner, since the revenue is about 6 times. My further migration is in progress, driven by this unexplained severe hit from AdSense. When you are kicked in the teeth like this, you must ask yourself if you are a masochist. I am not. Time to get proactive.

Four times the EPC, and 1/4 the CTR - it's a wash. Which way are ya gonna go?

[Play_Bach]

A few years ago I read on JenSense about her problems actually getting paid from Chitika, I take it things have improved?