Can we talk about click-through rates?

[csdude55]

Looking over the last 12 months, my CTR has ranged from 0.25% to 0.38%. The average is 0.31%.

I've read several articles showing that an average would be closer to 2%! :-O

My traffic hasn't really changed in several years (I have a local audience with a near 100% penetration, so pretty much everyone in the area visits the site at least once a week), but income has gone way, way, way down (like, about 25% of what it was a few years ago). I wasn't using Adsense the whole time so I can't compare a CTR before last year, but if it's lower then that would explain the loss of revenue.

On screen widths greater than 975px, my ad layout is with 3 banners on the right column (usually 300x250, occasionally 300x600 if no other content is available to separate the two 300x250s) with a 728x90 in the footer. Less than 975px has a leaderboard at the top and bottom. Both have a sticky horizontal at the bottom of the screen.

Any suggestions on how one might improve the CTR when they have the same recurring audience?

[tangor]

One site I worked with over the years used a method to "keep the page fresh looking" by shifting ONE ad position every six months. Still obviously and ad, but first half was on the right, second half was on the left. The thought was it would shake up the tendency for ad blindness ... yet not interfere with user expectations and information shared. Keeps things from being "boring!".

[csdude55]

I gotta do something, I'm seriously making less than half of what I need just to pay the overhead! And I'm running out of ideas :-(

[engine]

It sounds to me that you have traffic, but few are clicking.
There could be lots of reasons for that, including ad blockers, poor ads, irrelevant ads (to the visitors), ad blindness, etc.

There are ways to detect if adblockers are being used, so i'd carry out some research.

I've seen lots of poor quality ads in recent times, and those ads just don't attract clicks, even though the traffic is there.

I'd do the research first to try and establish the reasons.

You could ask your visitors for their thoughts with a survey. Consider a prize draw to entice them to complete it.

If it turns out any combination of the challenges i've mentioned, i'd consider looking towards changing from an ad click model to a sponsorship model: Local businesses prepared to get to your local audience.

[tangor]

Hard to say, csdude55 ...

If you are reliant on adsense the best you can do is shake up the visual presentation to keep eyes active. G will only pay what they will pay, but in reality they only pay when ads are clicked!

I don't mean do sneaky stuff, just keep the page "fresh" for your embedded audience ... who already know what the ads look like etc.

Do whatever you can to get the "best ads" or most "revalent" ads ... but that usually comes at a monetary cost somewhere down the line. Only you know when that helps or hurts.

This might sound like a broken mantra: Have you investigated doing your own ads? With a captive audience in a known locale surely you can find a biz that might like to have exposure? Direct ads are in your pocket with no middle man involved. Obviously not simple cut-and-paste, but if you give it a shot pays WAY better.

[matbennett]

"I've read several articles showing that an average would be closer to 2%! :-O"

I manage ads of publishers who don't want to DIY so get a view across hundreds of domains. I'd be very concerned about any site averaging 2% . Even at unit level that needs looking at closely.

[ronron]

I wish I had that kind of CTR. I'm averaging 0.15-0.18. My site has a lot of repeat users though.

[NickMNS]

@MattBennett

I'd be very concerned about any site averaging 2%.

Your statement is ambiguous. I assume you mean concerned in that 2% is unusually high. Is that correct?

@csdude55
My CTR is in the same range as your, maybe marginally better. I don't think that ad-blockers are in issue in this case as the impressions for blocked ad will not be recorded and thus will not negatively impact the CTR stat. That is not to say that ad-blocks are not negatively impacting your revenue.

@Tangor's comment:

G will only pay what they will pay, but in reality they only pay when ads are clicked!

This not entirely correct, there are CPM ads (3rd party ad networks), AVCPM (Adsense) as well as CPC ads and others (check your bid-types report for a full list).

One metric you may want to watch AVV (Active View Viewable), the metric measures the amount of time that ads can be seen by users. In a similar vain to Tangor's comment, ads can't be clicked if they are not in the user's view. This metric should also impact what you get paid for your ads, as ad buyer will be willing to bid more for ads that have a higher probability of being seen. I believe that an AVV of 50% is the minimum you should strive for.

Otherwise the comments by others about ad blindness may help. You may also want to consider some of the more "exotic" ad-units like "in-feed" or "in-article" ads, that can place ads closer to the content (closer as in, in the flow of the content, not as in reducing the spacing).

[nomis5]

I have found that putting 300 x 250 / 336 x 280 ads in the middle of the page width with no content to the left or right works well, rather than integrate the ads so that text is running around the ads. It looks a bit amateur I realise, but it seems to work for me.

For reference, over the past many years my CTR has run within the range 0.8% to 1.2% and has always averaged about 1% over the medium term.

As well as AVV mentioned above, take into account that ads placed at the top of content may well classify as being viewed but the reader may well just skip past them to read the content. It's a tricky balancing act.

[matbennett]

@NickMNS Yes, I definitely mean that it would be seen a high. High doesn't always mean bad - there are exceptions and reasons. But a site-wide CTR of 2% (even an unit level CTR of 2%) is something that I would expect one of my team to manually look into. I'd wager that most sites with a CTR that high are getting deductions for IVT.

Not sure how relevant this is in your case, but our strategy is always to move from CPC to CPM based ads. My take is that it is the publishers job to get an ad seen and the advertisers to get users to click on it. They're setting the targeting and building the creative afterall. Viewable CPM is much fairer IMHO. CTR will sill impact that (especially with Google Ads feeding into most demand), but it's a better metric to optimise for.

[NickMNS]

@nomis5

take into account that ads placed at the top of content may well classify as being viewed but the reader may well just skip past them to read the content.

The general idea is correct, but actually AVV tries to account for this. See the description of the metric below:

Active View data in reporting
Active View is Google’s ad viewability measurement solution, tracking the viewability of ads served by AdSense. Viewability helps determine how likely it is that an ad was actually seen by a user. An ad is counted as viewable if at least 50% of its area was displayed on-screen for at least one second (the minimum criteria according to Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards). Two important factors are (a) what portion of an ad appears in a viewable space on screen and (b) how long that portion of the ad remains visible.

If a user scrolls by the ad generally that would occur in less than a second and thus it would not be counted in AVV. In the ad-units report one can see the AVV per ad-unit, and you will see difference in placements (assuming that you have segregated your ad units by placement). This is good place to start when looking for placements to optimize.

[Pixby8]

My CTR is always 4% to 12% on any given day and I've never had any problems. The type of site you have makes a big difference. Also, I have never used more than one ad per page. If you use multiple ads, you are competing against yourself for those spots, and will have lower CPC. For some publishers, multiple ads on a page will increase revenue. But, that has never been my experience. I always make more with just 1 ad on each page. Gives me a higher CPC and CTR.