Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Each ad except for the 320x250 were tested for more than 500,000 impressions. The 320x250 has only been up for a few days but is showing great results. Only 1 ad unit was displayed at a time.
Note that the ad styles were also customized so that they blend in with the site. The border and background colours are made to be the same as the website background colour. The text link and text colours are the same as the ones used on the website.
I don't know if my CTR are high or low because I don't know what the average person gets. Please feel free to tell us your CTR, ad unit and where it was placed.
[enquiro.com...]
or try to figure out why the low CTR.
The difference from the worst to the best CTR of all this sites is 1:10
Working on my CTR since February
Junk ads into the URL filter: 1:1.2
Color scheme improved, blend in: 1:1.5
Placement improved: 1:1.5
Oddly enough the CTR seems to be better if I don't wrap the text around the box. It may not be pretty but I'll take the higher CTR and deal with it.
I don't know if my CTR are high or low because I don't know what the average person gets. Please feel free to tell us your CTR, ad unit and where it was placed.
In general, you numbers are somewhat low, however, there are an incredibly large number of variables that factor into the end result... and they could actually be great numbers for your site.
I'm going to strongly disagree with rbacal's comments about your CTR being wretched... especially with 3 ad units. You haven't provided near enough information for him to make that assumption imho.
CTR Guide:
[webmasterworld.com...]
As I state in that post, I could easily live off my AdSense earnings from my 0.3% CTR site... comfortably.
Oddly enough the CTR seems to be better if I don't wrap the text around the box. It may not be pretty but I'll take the higher CTR and deal with it.
My experience is the opposite.
I'm surprised that most of you are getting CTR of over 1%. I run 3 website, all the same subject and the CTR for them are under 1%. I think what's happening is that people are browsing and skimming through my website resulting in more impressions & a lower CTR. Are you using any placement strategies to increase your CTR?
If you are asking about other's CTR for curiosity's sake, fine... if you are asking in order to compare, don't bother.
Denny, if you are talking about a FRACTION of 1% as clickthru, that's really wretched by almost any standards in the industry. Good on you if you are making good money, but if it were me, I'd be looking at whether you can do better with other ad options, particularly CPM programs.
or try to figure out why the low CTR.
Actually my google adsense is providing the most profits out of the other CPM advertisers I have use (burst> casale> fastclick> mamma media).
I will try to apply for Tribal Fusion again this year as I've heard their CPM is a lot higher than others.
I need to compare other people's CTR to mine in order to know out if my CTR is high or low.
There are way too many variables to make accurate comparisons. Like I stated before, you could in fact have great CTR for your site. Just becuase someone else has a 5% CTR does not mean your 0.7% CTR is bad by any means.
Once you starting comparing with other sites, unless those sites are virtually identical in topic, design, traffic quantity, traffic source, etc, you aren't going to get an accurate guage of whether your CTR is good/bad.
Use your own CTR as a benchmark to improve upon, not other's.
Here is 1 example:
Site A - 1 ad block - GreenWidgets - 10,000 visitors - 1000 clicks
Site B - 1 ad block - GreenWidgets - 10,000 visitors - 1000 clicks
Site C - 3 ad blocks -GreenWidgets - 10,000 visitors - 10,000 clicks (for example's sake)
Site A's visitors visit an average of 10 pages (100,000 impressions)
Site B's visitors visit an average of 3 pages (30,000 impressions)
Site C's visitors visit an average of 10 pages (300,000 impressions)
Site A CTR - 1.0%
Site B CTR - 3.3%
Site C CTR - 3.3%
If you were only comparing CTR, one could wrongly assume that Site B was performing 3X better than Site A... when in all reality, they are virtually identical as they are getting the same number of visitors, the same number of clicks, and the same size check... just one has visitors that read more pages.
One would also wrongly assume that Site B was performing as well as Site C... when in fact, Site C is slaughtering Site B.
It's only an example, but Site C is averaging 1 click for every single visitor to the site... but due to having 3 ad blocks & 10 pageviews per user, is only getting 3.3% CTR.
So unless you are going to share all aspects of your site, and those responding are going to share all their details as well (which is not going to happen) there will be no way for anyone else to accuartely comment of your CTR, and there will be no way for you to gauge your CTR compared to theirs.
Use your own CTR as a benchmark to improve upon, not other's.
If you are wanting to evaluate your CTR, and some starting points for improving, check out [webmasterworld.com...]
Use your own CTR as a benchmark to improve upon, not other's.
The above isn't "wrong", but neither is it right. Low CTR's may be an important symptom or indicator that you have problems (that you might be able to fix), and the only way you will know that is if you have at least SOME basis for comparison.
Below 1% is simply abysmal by almost any standard at any time on the internet for advertising. The exception being forum based sites, OR sites that have very high page views per individual visit (even then it can be a problem).
Now, if CPM is, let's say $3.00 even with that low CTR, then you aren't going to get better than that with network offered advertising (e.g. fastclick). But you might do much better with direct advertising if you want to go that route, or with CPA type stuff if it fits.
Nonetheless, it's important to at first recognize that that IS a low CTR, and that it's worth figuring out WHY that's the case. Is it the nature of your visitors? Is it the nature of your traffic? MOST importantly, is it possible you have your pages structured so you are not being given the most relevant ads possible by adsense? And on and on.
So, if you want to make more money, yes, benchmark and pay attention to what other sites are getting, so you can tell whether you have work to do, and what kind of work.
Here's an example. Joe's got a site that does 0.7 CTR. His pages are packed with information, each page containing information on a lot of different topics. Joe's pleased that he raised from a 0.5 to .7, so it doesn't occur to him he's a)losing serious money, and b) the reason is that the structure of the pages is set so he isn't getting relevant ads properly. Too much diverse content. Contextual ads don't work well that way, and you won't get a good match between search engine traffic and the ads.
So, he stays where he is.
Yes, all sites are different. But let's turn it around. When you see someone talking about getting a 10-15% CTR, aren't you DYING to know how the person is doing it? Of course. It's the same if you are at the bottom end, and you are serious about it.
The above isn't "wrong", but neither is it right.
However I still don't feel that you can accurately use 'wretched' & 'abysmal' to label sub-1% CTR without knowing all the details of the site.. and those details have not been provided.
I've illustrated above that having every single user click on an ad can result in a 3.3% CTR... and all it takes is 3 ad blocks & 10 pages per visitors (something I'm sure many people here have). Having only 25% of those visitors click on an ad would result in a 0.83% CTR... I'm sure many people here would love to have a 25% visitor CTR w/ a .83% AdSense CTR..
Nowhere have I stated that a sub-1% CTR is automatically good, but at the same time, the vast majority here automatically & ignorantly label it as bad.
So, if you want to make more money, yes, benchmark and pay attention to what other sites are getting, so you can tell whether you have work to do, and what kind of work.
Joe's pleased that he raised from a 0.5 to .7...
so it doesn't occur to him... So, he stays where he is.
I think we're pretty much on the same page, expect for there being a hard cut-off for when CTR should be automatically labeled as bad.
I think that in higher traffic levels, CPM and Adsense will have the same or similar results (i.e.: NYT).
but if you have 2 adsense plus an adlink plus a banner, plus a skyscraper, plaus a cube ad, plus a dozen links on a navigation, plus links to content within articles itself, the given ctr on any ad or link goes down greatly, so you might get .4% ctr on adsense and think you suck, but the reality is that's a healthy ctr on a site with so many potential actions for a reader to take.
I think you folks are assuming that you look ONLY at CTR in the equation. It's one factor that might indicate a problem. In your example, the question I have is this: If you want to improve your site income, and you have these low CTR's, perhaps you shouldn't have so many creatives sitting on your pages, or you should consider altering the structure of your pages.
Now, if the .4 CTR for some adblocks is actually making significant money, then fine (obviously that's another thing to look at). But if it's not making money then why have it there? And, your example makes my point about knowing you need to look at your page structure IF your CTR is low (and again, you can inform yourself as to what is "low" by comparing to others. It's quite possible to restructure you site menus, etc to generate more income and also, btw, to make navigation easier.
...and how would you know what your CTR "could be" if you altered/fixed things unless you have an idea of what might be typical from other sites?
...and as my final note here, it's common practice to look at other businesses in your area to benchmark, or see how and what they are doing, and the results they are getting them. Why do you think they do that?
lol, youre the one who called his performance wretched because of his ctr..
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My article pages on specific topics do pretty well. But click through can vary a lot even on one site. Popular articles can get 5% or more while what I call pointer pages like a page of links to a given topic does poorly. That makes sense as there are so many interesting choices of articles that the reader might be interested in.
Another big factor is if there is an abundance of ads available for your topic. Some of my topics do well because of that while others never get well targeted ads and some I've given up and taken adsense off.
Also it can vary by the time of month and whether you get many different visitors or mostly repeat visitors. After a while repeat visitors don't click as often. So if you have a lot of repeat visitors that may be the reason for a low click rate but if overall you make money what does it matter.
That all said and done I like one of the tall towers on the side for contents type pages and I prefer the large rectangle floated to the right of the first paragraph on article pages. For a long time I used the medium rectangle but the larger one just shows off the ads better I think because it does better even though it has the same number of ads.
There is more to consider than CTR. You want to build the reputation of your site getting it bookmarked and linked to. If everyone leaves right away by clicking on ads that's not good either.
... if you have 2 adsense plus an adlink plus a banner, plus a skyscraper, plaus a cube ad, plus a dozen links on a navigation, plus links to content within articles itself, the given ctr on any ad or link goes down greatly, so you might get .4% ctr on adsense and think you suck, but the reality is that's a healthy ctr on a site with so many potential actions for a reader to take.
Nice observation. It helps explain why the CTR on my info portal site is so "poor". On just about every one of that site's pages, there are dozens and dozens of links to other resources. Is it any wonder that visitors so seldom exit pages via ad links?
If I have 3 ads on my website and 1 person visits my website. Will I have 3 impressions or 1 impression?
If I have 3 ads on my website and 1 person visits my website. Will I have 3 impressions or 1 impression?
If the three ads are on the same page you would have 1 page impression and 3 ad impressions for each time a person that visited that page.
too bad cpm sucks and i just vanished from google search results.
