What's a good CTR for Adsense?

I was wondering, what's considered to be a good CTR? I mean, for Forums, 1% is perfect, but what about contet sites? Should/Could CTR be higher than 2? Or maybe higher than 3%? What do you guys think?

I am talking about Adsense here.

 

I have a lousy 0.2%

 

I'd say between 2-8% for content sites.

 

I've noticed that Google's Adsense demand is much more than their supply now that they've allowed multiple ads per page. I seem to be getting more PSAs than before.

 

I have the same average of clicks, but I'm getting about 35% of what I was earning last month. Seems they are paying much less per click now.

 

Hmm. I have seen no noticeable change. I actually had a spike up the past 3 days ... but my guess is just a lucky anomally.

CTR - on "content" sites I see 3-8% and on forums I see .02-.05%.

 

fryman ---- by any chance did you increase the number of adsense units on the site where you have seen a signicant decrease in the payouts?

Someone in another forum made the really insightful point that when increasing the number of adsense units, you run the risk of dramatically lowering payouts from the same number of clicks...

cut and pasted ...

--------
I am a little dubious about adding additional Adsense blocks.

At present with a single block, you are getting the highest paying ads displayed, and you will have a 1in4 chance that the surfer will be clicking on the best paying ad.

With three blocks of 4 ads, you would have only a 1in12 that the surfer will be clicking on the best paying ad.

AND you have an 8in12 chance that the surfer will click on an ad which will generate a lower value than the worst of your 4 original ads.

I believe that there is a strong possibility that your value per click will go down, so you would have to hope that the click throuhg rate increses sufficiently to offest this.

If anyone does add extra Adsense blocks, I would be interested to hear whether they gained additional revenue from the change.
--------

 

Yes, I did add an extra block, I have one at the top of the page, and one at the bottom.
I'll try it out for a couple of weeks, if things don't get better, I'll go back to only one block.

 

I got only 0.3% CTR

 

Yes, that was my post on your forum.

 

I'm getting the same number of clicks but my EPC has dropped a bunch. I have one adsense block at top of the page and added one to the bottom. Looks like the bottom one will go real soon.

 

I really think you folks ought to take another look at the Google Terms of Service before continuing this discussion at the level of detail at which it has been proceeding. Google does not want particular (meaning your) numbers discussed. Proceed at your own risk.

In the general sense, that thought on multiple ad blocks was eye-opening, the sort of thing that makes one slap one's forehead and groan. Like the safety pin, it is blindingly obvious in hindsight. Congratulations to nadlay.

Still speaking generally, when I started adding AdSense, about a month ago, I had a CTR that was, so far as I can judge, modestly above average; as time has gone by, that dropped to what I think of as about average; now, as I am adding substantial numbers of encyclopedia-site pages, and impressions, more or less day by day, I find the CTR dropping significantly. Whether that is because encyclopedia-lookup pages hold visitors for a shorter time, or are less carefully read past the first couple of paragraphs, or whether it is because I was trying out doubled ad placements I don't know. I dropped the second ad block instantly I read that post, but it takes a few days for channel data to clarify, so we'll see.

I also see that my CPM went down significantly as the impressions went up--same comments apply.

It will all certainly be very interesting.

 

Well judging from the CTR mentioned above it seems that content sites clearly rank higher than forums. What's a ridiculour CTR to target? 10% 15% 20%? I'm interested as I've only started with adsense in the last two weeks and my CTR is up and down and round and round....

 

I would say over 15-18% would be borderline.

 

the good CTR for content sites is from 1% to 2.4%

 

it really depends on where you can stick it. if you don't mind making radical changes to your site, you can get a pretty high CTR fairly easily.

two suggested placements:

1) inline ads- no border, in the content. I generally stick it in between the page title/h1, and the paragraph that follows it. you can use an ad that doesn't take up much space and still get a really decent CTR. an example: www.ffshrine.org/ff7/ff7.php

2) if you have a standard three column site (two columns for nav, one for content- you know, that sort of thing), take a skyscraper (borderless, again), and stick it in one of the two columns. left tends to perform a lot better, probably because that's "traditionally" where the nav is, so people look there first

do NOT treat it just like a banner ad- this results in really really horrible CTRs.

 

Our homeless site shows more impressions than our youth / travel site.

The homeless site earns bugger all though through adsense as the ads served are few and far between and mainly minimum bid ads (due to the nature of the content) - where as the youth / travel site is as expected a fairly successful site in terms of adsense revenue.

Thanks disgust for the tips on where to place the ads - when we ad a new forum to our youth / travel site I'll see if I can get the ads to serve down the left of the page - will tell you how it goes (if I can get it to work).

 

Does Google have any limitations on ad's position? Just feel not so right to put it inside the content.

 

I've seen it on lots of sites, and there's really NOTHING in the TOS that's against that...

(I think a lot of major news sites do something similar)

it may seem "wrong" because you're used to treating adsense like a banner ad- but that typically results in horrible CTR.

 

I see adsense tracker's recently been purchased from the original developer and is now only available through a Paypal link.

It provides real-time stats on the performance of your ad's and which advertisers / type of content attract the best CTR.

Dominic, as you run a public service site you may be able to get a free copy which will save any guess work on which colour schemes and layouts work.

http://adsensetracker.info/