Does CTR matter on the content network?

Should I turn off MySpace if it is getting 100k impressions and no clicks?

[JBrown]

I don't mind the extra ad impressions from sites like MySpace, but does it hurt my overall content campaign if those ads aren't getting clicks and driving down the overall CTR?

Looking at Google's help information, it looks like it is hurting the campaign:

"The Quality Score related to Ad Rank on the content network is determined by:
-The ad's past performance on the site in question, as well as on similar sites"

I wanted to see what thoughts people had or if I'm reading too much into the above language.

[poster_boy]

"The ad's past performance on the site in question, as well as on similar sites"

My guess is that Google addresses this by categorizing "similar sites". If your performance on social networking sites is similar to other advertisers (which I believe it is) - then, your results on these sites should not be a detriment to your overall efforts.

[JBrown]

I would hope so, but I'm leaning towards turning them off just in case. "Similar sites" may just mean the AdSense bucket that they have put you in. It may not matter that the site is a social network, small blog, or trade publisher.

[johnnie]

I think this is a very interesting point. While the generally cheap clicks from the content network might be nice, the low CTR on content pages could hurt your ad group on the longer term. I for one have turned off the content network because of this (and other reasons irrelevant to this discussion).

[Khensu]

I have a completely separate campaign for social networking. If you isolate a site and associated keywords per adgroup you can really see what is going on. Just run content in said campaign and duplicate successful keywords etc from other campaigns(or new ones). I also have a second set of pages that slave to a second index landing page to evaluate the roi. Pretty much the rule of thumb is if it goes below 1 click per 4,000 impressions, dump it.

[poster_boy]

...the low CTR on content pages could hurt your ad group on the longer term.

Just to clarify, are you referring to a low Content CTR hurting the performance of Search campaigns - or Content campaigns in the long-run?

[JBrown]

As the original poster, I was talking about the low CTR affecting only the content campaigns.

johnnie, Google has explicitly stated that content network CTRs don't affect search. The trick with the content network it to run that in a seperate campaign and use site exclusion to weed out poor performing sites. I've had good success doing that with slightly lower bids than search campaigns.

Khensu, that's probably a good rule of thumb. Honestly, I don't mind the extra impressions (there has to be some limited brand effect), but not if they are hurting the overall content campaign.