I have 3 ad slots per page (getting preety high cost per click for all of the ads, so removing them wont be good for me), but getting low CTR (about 0.7%) because it's showing 3 ads per page which increases dramaticlly the impressions count, which lowers CTR. Can I get smart-priced / banned by google for having low CTR? If so I assume I'll drop few ad slots, so I'll get higher CTR, and keep high cost per click, instead of getting smart-priced and have all my earnings drop to about nothing... Thanks for the advices
CTR has nothing to do with smart pricing. You get smart priced when you sites actual clicks are not converting as well for the advertiser when compared to other sites.
That's odd.... I read in a few places that smart pricing occurs with a low CTR. I think there was a Google Adsense Blog post about it; I need to look into that.
People keep saying this and i think its crazy... How would google know if your click converted at the advertisers site? i have advertised my business on adsense, paid $1.00 + per click but i dont sell anything on the site, only a phone number for potential clients to call, theres no way to track this but even if it was that i was selling something maybe the advertiser would be able to track it but i just fail to see a possible way google can track this. backto the question ive read were bad ctr may cause smart pricing and it could make sense as maybe its just google doesnt was to load an ad 1000 times and make 2 cents from it.
Obviously they cannot know if every single click converts, but they make a determination based on the data they have. This data can come from the toolbar installed as well as analytics. It has NOTHING to do with your CTR. Smart pricing is a reduction in price charged to the advertiser. Smart Pricing means google makes less money. It's all about the advertiser return. As the quality among sites and traffic can be night and day in the content network, its an attempt to set pricing based on the quality of traffic. Smart pricing was introduced to try and keep advertisers from not participating in the content network due to low conversions and poor traffic (to this day, many advertiser won't touch the content network). While smart pricing isn't determined by CTR - High CTR can actually produce poorer quality of traffic and be smart priced. This can happen with low quality sites where the visitor clicks an ad just to exit the site or where ads are so well blended that they get clicked on by a visitor not knowing it was an ad. This can result in low quality traffic for the advertiser as the visitor tends to exit the advertisers site quicker. Think about it. The advertiser doesn't care about your CTR. They care about the quality of traffic. They would rather have quality traffic from a .1% CTR site than poorer quality from a 25% CTR site.
Low ctr doesn’t not have anything to do with smart pricing. That only happens when all the traffic you sent to the advertiser doesn’t convert well for them.
Awesome. Thanks for the clarification. My site is actually smart-priced right now and I always thought it was because of CTR thanks to posts on a different forum. What would you recommend to get out of the smart-pricing?
How do you know your site is smart priced? Ad prices are down and payouts really depend on your niche. Smart pricing is calculated every week but while there isn't a whole lot you can do - ad placement can be a factor. As I stated, "accidental" clicks from well blended ads can have a high exit rate (person who clicked an ad leaves the advertisers site immediately) and this of course affects the success of the advertiser. While you can't directly control if your traffic converts, your sites traffic is compared to other sites that are running the same ad. If your sites traffic has a 5% conversion rate for the advertiser, and another persons site has a 10% conversion, it's obvious which site the advertiser would be willing to pay more for their ad. Having a high quality "authority" site can also lead to higher pricing. If you have a great site the visitor will tend to trust the advertising more (think webMD vs. Joe's blog of auto-scrapped medical content). If you become an authority site, advertisers will target your site for ads and this leads to higher payouts. I have a site that went from around 50 cents a click to well over $1 average now that there are over 30 advertisers targeting it. You can check to see if any advertisers are targeting your site by going to your adsense account - Adsense Setup / Ad Review Center.