Being completely new to Adwords (internet marketing in general actually) I've started to have a go at promoting several products on-line, more as a hobby than a serious business at present, simply to see if I have the ability to succeed at it. I recently started an Adwords campaign (last week), and having let it run for just one week, I have realized I have an issue with Content Network ads. I obviously have a lot of work to do regarding my Adword campaign as my CTR has yet to get above 1% However, my question is this. I thought there may be some benefit in displaying some banner ads on the Content Network, but viewing the CTR after a week the results are simply pathetic - 0.04%! Is this typical? Is it even worth bothering with Content Ads? What sort of CTR have other people experienced? Needless to say I have ceased the Content Ad portion of my campaign as it appears pointless, but I'm interested to learn from the experiences of seasoned Adword users.
I mostly advertise via the content network. I know it is not popular among the AdWords pros, but it costs less to me and I still get results. My CTR on everage is between 1-2%.
Content network is very typical to have extremely low CTR. If you are using the content network do not focus on CTR, since it does not play a major factor in QS and the CTR % is typically in the 0.01% - 0.5% range. For the content network, just focus on ROI. If its converting keep it and optimize it, if its not converting, dump it and start another