ad placment ok?

I'll be honest, I'm new to this and still learning. I'm running a local site, and so far have gotten over 2,000 impressions & 200 uniques over about 2 weeks time, but very few clicks (think my CTR is around 1%). Is this placement ok? I've played around w/ putting the ads above the front page survey, but then that gets too buried. I've also thought about putting the ads in between my articles and the local news articles. thoughts?

http://www.athensbarhopper.com

 

very bad ad placement, look for the google adsense heatmap, modify your template accordingly and come back for a review.

 

"look for the google adsense heatmap,"

can you tell me what does it means google adsense heatmap?

 

Welcome to the forums. Here's the "heatmap" he was referring to.
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=17954

Use this with a grain of salt, it's not always the definitive answer for ad placement.

Overall, the ad placement is not terrible, but you need to somehow bring more attention to it. I wouldn't normally recommend doing this, but you somehow need to "unblend" the adblock somehow and contrast the rest of the page. Even a basic border might work, I'm not totally sure.

 

Its ok, but you could do with a few more ads and a more ads in the center of your page.

 

FYI when someone tells you to look for XYZ, use google.com and type XYZ.

Of course the heatmap is not ideal, but at the very least looking at it you'd want to try something else than you have now.

I don't understand those who told you that your current ad placement was OK, it's not, it's terrible, nobody will click on your single ad.

Use the heatmap to modify and then ask for a review, at the moment it's too basic.

 

Currently your site completely goes against the heat map it's almost like an chill map based site.

 

wow, thanks! I have never seen or heard of this heat map before. I'll work on the templating some.

 

correct, heat map is providing good information, thx to wyattt for information

 

Well obviously someone did click on a 'single ad' because his CTR isn't 0%.

 

When I say nobody I hope most people understand what I mean..
If you're happy with a less than 5% CTR I'm not.

 

you are not allowed to publish your ctr .

it's against the tos

 

IS it against the tos to post uselessly?

 

ok, I tried moving them around some, as well as adding adsense to the bottom of every article. Is this good?

 

hmmm .. i think so !

 

instead of the first 728x15 put two 336x280 one next to the other.
on the left column, put 3 adlink blocks one above the other, looking like a menu. and add a google search somewhere. Good luck you'll be getting there eventually, but don't listen to those who say "it's ok" because I think they are totally useless for your own use, I'm sure you don't want nice comments, you want to increase your earnings!