Hello all, I recently started a forum (30 days old). I get about 1500 hits a day but the number of clicks is just 1 or 2 a day. My average CTR is only 0.1. I heard that CTR is usually less in forums. Is 0.1 fair enough?
Dear phanirocks If you're using Google AdSense to monetize your forum (Of course you would be) and you're getting 1,500 hits on a daily basis then I would say that 0.1% CTR is not good at all. I suggest you to review your Ad placement and try to place them in accordance with Google AdSense heatmap. A minimal CTR of 2%-5% is required in order to garner a considerable revenue. Towards your success,
Thanks a ton for your reply. Can you brief me what adsense heatmap is? I haven't heard about such a thing before. I am getting sick of looking at the .1 CTR . My niche is one of the high paying niches and I am sure I would be benefited a lot if I can resolve the CTR issue. DO you think 2 to 5% CTR is achievable in forums?
Dear phanirocks The AdSense "Heat Map" illustrates the ideal placing on a sample page layout. The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). Yes! I do believe that a CTR of 2%-5% can be achieved in forums easily. Here's the Forum Heat Map from the Official AdSense blog; I further suggest you to head out through Six AdSense optimization tips for forums post/ article inside AdSense Blog and Where should I place Google ads on my pages? article inside AdSense › Help articles › Add to your earnings. I believe it’ll help you to find an answer/ solution to your question/ problem easily and to understand the "Forum and Blog Heat Map" in order to increase your CTR and Revenue. Towards your success,
No buddy its not enough. But hey you can improve it bu altering ad placement. But look at the bright side, you are having 1500 hits per day in only 30 days. Good Job
BTW Guys check out the comments on that page in adsense blog. I have never seen such a beautiful display of spam.
Xpressmusic, thanks a ton for the tip. I have learnt so many things and CTR has slightly improved too. Thanks again
Typically the eyes follow an F-shape pattern. Blend the Adsense so it looks like the font, size, and color of other links on the page. Also, Adsense images tend to be more of CPM, so you may make more from those, as apposed to text. I would do a mixture, with a banner at the top. There is also that annoying 'link advertising' (I don't know the name) that sites are using.
Dear phanirocks I'm glad to know that the information I've presented is being useful to you and you're always welcome as someone will always be there to help you to get rid of your problems and issues. Towards your success,
It was also due to one of my silly mistakes. I dint change the default meta tag and due to that reason, some irrelevant ads were being displayed that my audience were not interested in. Now, I changed them and that improved CTR to an extent. Thanks a lot guys for your help
I run several forums and I am working with adsense for about 5 years now. A CTR of 1-2% is achievable for forums, above 2 is hard to achieve and above 4 very unlikely on a bigger scale. High CTRs are possible with low number of impressions because 1 click can make a difference of several %. But if anyone running a forum has a CTR above 3 with 10k+ impressions per day PLEASE contact me (but I doubt that I get a PM )!
0.1% is quite low, I usually reckon on 0.5 to 1%. The suggestions above might help but you can also change your link colour... this usually is important . .
I changed the meta tags in my forum but I still see ads like firebreaking , boardbreaking etc that are no way related to my niche (education). What must be the reason for that?..By the way the vertical ad unit is performing the best among all as shown in that figure ! One more thing, I am planning to use in-text advertising as well. Which is the best ad network for in-text advertising. Most of my traffic comes from India
Dear phanirocks Google AdSense is a context sensitive Ad network/ program and if you're using AdSense for Content then Ads highly depend on the content of your page or content of the particular part of your page where you're displaying Ads. Though it's good to use keywords in Meta tags in your pages and it for sure improves the relativeness of the Ads but I suggest you and it's recommended to keep an eye on the content along with Meta tags. If you're still seeing Ads which are not relevant to your content and you don't want to show them up on your pages then you can opt for Competitive Ad Filtering feature of AdSense to filter and block those Ads. I suggest you to head out through Competitive Ad Filter article inside AdSense Help › Help articles › Working with my ads › Filtering and blocking ads. I'm happy to hear that you're planning to use In Text Advertising along with AdSense and it's good because it is suggested that one should not place his all eggs inside a single basket. I've been using infolinks for several months and when it comes to In Text Advertising then they tend to deliver what they promise to their publishers. I recommend you to give infolinks a try. Furthermore, I believe it’ll help you to improve your CTR and Revenue to a comparatively higher level. Towards your success,
Dear Dominium I'm happy to hear that it worked for you and you liked it because best practices always pay us. Here are the AdSense Heat Maps for Blogs and Sites according to the Official AdSense Help; AdSense Heat Map for Blogs AdSense Heat Map for Sites I want you to give it a try and it'll take your CTR and Ad revenue to a never seen horizons. Towards your success and happy earnings,