what's the lowest ctr you'd tolerate?

[disgust]

they always say industry standards for CTRs on untargetted banner ads are roughly .5%. currently, I'm getting even less than this on YPN. despite that, I'm still making decent money-- more than I was with adsense, even.

but I just feel like there's got to be room for improvement here. I know all of the basics (eliminate borders, decent placement) and I'm even using some more advanced tactics ("the four images trick") but nothing seems to get the CTR up to something that seems like it'd be moderately normal. I'm at the point where I'd kill for a 1 or 2% CTR.

on the site, there are about ten pageviews per unique visitor.

is it possible that there's simply no room for improvement? if there is, but you've tried everything you can think of, what's next? are any consulting firms actually likely to be able to help?

[pcgamez]

The problem here is that different categories have different CTRs. I would not expect to have higher than .5% in my area (books) unless I made my ads intrusive. Heck, I would be happy with .5%

[wmuser]

I have seen 1.0%+ CTR at Adsense accounts

[wyweb]

What is the four images trick?

[JollyK]

YPN CTR is abysmal compared to Adsense, but their higher CPC was making it worth it for awhile. Now: not so sure. I never got less than 1% with Adsense and I don't think I've ever gotten more than 0.6% with YPN, usually lower.

I've also tried several different placements and blending and not blending and so forth. Their ad targeting feature doesn't work at all for me (niche site), so that may be part of it.

I don't know: I'd love to hear ways anyone increased their YPN CTR, but it seems to me that it's all about their targeting issues, at least on the sites I've used it on.

JK

[flashgordon]

why is it the targeting always gets out of whack after an "maintenance" update? my site is now displaying totally irrelevant ads and the CTR just dropped by 50%. i hope they fix it soon (or rather, stop fixing what doesnt need to be fixed).

[morpheus83]

Low CTR does not matter as long as the cpm is high