Low Ctr? Low Cpc? Here's Why!

I see the same few problems coming up in here A LOT. People ask why their ctr (click thru rate, the % of visitors that click on your ads) is so low, or why their cpc (cost per click, how much you make on every click) is so low. In my personal opinion, these answers explain why these problems happen. You just need to figure out which one applies to you, and how to correct it.

If you need help with either of these problems, and you can't figure out exactly what is wrong with your site, feel free to mention your url here or pm me. I'm throwing this on here in an effort to give back a little bit to the DP community (you have no idea how much I have taken from it).

Low CTR​

So your ctr is low? That means that you have a ctr below 3%. Of course we all want a site with billions of visitors and a 20% ctr, but that isn't always going to happen. If you have a ctr of between 3% - 5%, you could probably improve it. If your ctr is greater than 5%, you're doing great. If your ctr is less than 3%, you have one of these problems:

Problem 1- Ad placement. The ideal position for ads, most of the time, is above the fold. You normally want your visitors to see the ads without scrolling down. The number one position for ads, usually, is smack dab in the middle, just below the header. Normally, large rectangular ads work best, but each site is different.

Problem 2- Ad Blending. Generally speaking, you don't want your ads to stick out like a weird alien footprint. You want your ads to blend into the content. In an ideal world, your visitors would think of the ads as an extension of your site. They would see the ads as links that they should click on for more information, or to purchase the product that they are seeking. You can achieve this effect by matching the ad background colors in the ads with your site, having similar fonts, removing the border, and having the same font colors as the rest of your site. For many sites, blue links on white backgrounds rock, if that matches the style of your site. Just ask yourself if your ads stand out to you. If they do, and they look like they don't belong, that's usually not a good thing.

Problem 3- Your traffic source sucks! The only traffic source that is worth a flip is natural, organic traffic. If your site is just insanely awesome (so rare that it's a waste of space to even mention this), word of mouth sharing of your site is great. Other than that, you really want all of your traffic coming from the search engines. If you are spending a ton of time hustling Stumble and Digg, you will see a very low ctr. Sure, the traffic makes you smile, but most of those visitors just won't click your ads. To correct this, you need to either learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), or hire an SEO guru to help you. If you do want to hire one, be very careful. I would say that 95% of the folks that think they are SEO pros on DP don't know jack chit.

Problem 4- Lengthy articles that give all the information. If your site does such an awesome job at detailing everything that the visitor wants to know, in a very lengthy process, then why would the visitor want to go elsewhere by clicking on links (ads)? The truth is that a crappy, short article that makes the visitor scratch his head and want to keep looking for more leads to the best ctr. If you want an insanely high ctr, make a 1 sentence article that says absolutely nothing (just using this as an example, so don't be stupid!). The reality is that you need to give enough information away to attract repeat visitors or search engine visitors, but you can do this in a manner that won't tank your ctr. Try to keep your writing style brief and to the point. Instead of saying something with 1,000 words that are mainly fluff, say it in 400 words that cut to the chase. That's the best advice I can give.

Problem 5- Repeat visitors. Repeat visitors suck at clicking on ads. This is why forums have such a hard time in general. If you are a regular here at DP, when was the last time you clicked on an ad? Repeat visitors are great for adding content to your site and spreading the word, but they are horrible for clicking on ads. Fix this by working harder on gaining more search engine visitors (where the $$ is at).

Problem 6- Your niche. Some niches lead to a low ctr. No matter what you do, you just can't improve it by much. The PERFECT example for this is DP, a webmaster niche. Webmasters are generally savvy about ads and totally ignore them. The good news though is that some of these low ctr niches have very high cpc ads. You can also help this a bit by supplementing your site with other niche topics that yield a higher ctr.

Problem 7- Mismatched ads. If your page is about buckets and you are seeing ads about pies, you have a problem. More likely than not, your writing style is not concise and organized in a matter that is easily understood by G's dumb robots, but other things (even the page url) can lead to this. You can eliminate a lot of this with section targeting.

Low CPC​

So your cost per click is low? When you do get a click, it's not worth very much? This one can be tough to deal with because so much of it just depends on the niche you're in, but there are some major problems that you can eliminate to increase your eCPM.

Problem 1- Your niche. Some niches just have a horrible earning per click, and that's all there is to it. A classic example is the celebrity gossip niche. You may be able to get a ton of clicks on your gossip site, but don't be surprised if you only make $.03 a click. You can do something about this by injecting some higher paying content into the site, or using your high traffic/ low cpc gossip pages to send people to your high $ pages.

Problem 2- Your traffic sucks! If all of your traffic is coming from Somalia or Iran, uhhh.... you won't earn very much for those clicks. Advertisers (Adword customers) know that Somalians likely won't convert very well on their end, so they won't pay very much for Somalian traffic, if they will bid on it at all. You can improve on this by targeting richer countries such as the U.S., Canada, Australia, etc.

Problem 3- Too many ads. If you have 3 ad units on every page, you will end up with some low paying ads in most cases. There are some niches that can get away with this (finance), but not many. Generally speaking, you want either 1 or 2 ad units on every page.

Problem 4- Smart priced. If your traffic doesn't convert well for the advertisers, Google can smart price you. This usually happens if you are sending crappy traffic from social site visitors. Adwords customers can track their conversions down to the source of the traffic on their end, and Google does monitor those numbers to lower the price paid to poorly performing publishers.

Problem 5- Image ads. This isn't always true, so you need to test it yourself, but usually image ads pay less. Why? Because the HUGE advertisers that create these slick ads have giant advertising budgets. They use their economy of scale to blast a high volume of ads on a very low cpc basis. Google feels the pressure to display their ads (they want the millions these advertisers are paying them in total), so G will jump on the opportunity to display cheap image ads. I have yet to find a site that benefits from image ads (they also just look like the plain old banner ads that nobody clicks anymore), but I'm sure that some exist. Just test this for a week or so and find out for yourself.



If I have left anything out, feel free to add on. If you disagree with anything, holler at me. If you need specific help with a site of yours, feel free to mention it here or pm me. Thanks to DP and all of you here that have helped me so much!!!!

 

thanks nice information

 

You're welcome.

 

Real good information. Must read for all AdSense publishers. Thanx.

 

it's something that took me a month of browsing this forum to figure out on my own. excellent post! thanks for the wealth of information.

 

Thanks for the information
Rep added

 

9/10 rating. Atleast helpful for newbies. Added REP.

 

Very kind of you. Thank you so much.

It only took you a month?? lol I think it took me a year!!

Thank you.

 

I am new to Digital Point and to read this post on my first visit is a pleasant surprise.

Very well written and full of practical information for adsense beginners.

 

Rep wasn't asked for, but thank you.

Thank you. I agree that much of it is for newbs, but even some of us that have been doing this for a while can focus a little better on a few points. One that I still struggle with is redirecting visitors from high traffic/ low cpc pages to low traffic/ high cpc pages. That in itself is an art form that I am still trying to develop.

Thank you.

Welcome to DP. This place has enough information (and a little misinformation for good measure lol) to keep you/ me busy reading for a long time. For some reason I tend to bounce from one topic to the next to focus on. Right now I feel like losing some dough, so I'm stuck in the "Adwords" category.

 

say something about low ecpm. & Thanks for this

 

You're welcome.

Low eCPM is a function of a low ctr and/ or a low cpc. eCPM just says how much $ you are averaging for every 1,000 impressions. eCPM varies so much based upon the niche, ctr, and cpc.

Do you have specific questions about eCPM? I'll try to answer, if I can.

At the end of the day, all of these numbers don't mean a lot. What really matters is how much dough you are stuffing into your pocket after expenses. I'll take a 1% ctr site with a cpc of $.03 all day/ every day if I can drive a million visitors to it.

But the numbers can help you figure out how to extract more out of what you have. In that 1 million visitor example, imagine how much of an impact just raising the ctr to 3% would have, or raising the cpc to $.06.

I guess it all comes down to maximizing traffic volume and the amount you can extract from them. If you can combine these 2 elements (traffic and $$), you will be laughing all the way to the G bank.

 

Great info there mate, I was actually playing with the thought that if you supplied too much info they wouldnt need to click, nice one !

 

Super info, but... about the blending ads into you website.. how come on this forum, I see the ad on the right top corner, and its orange, completely not blended and sticking out..

 

Very Nice and informative post, thank you
+rep added

 

Thanks. Yes, it is very true. Just imagine that you went to a store to buy a bat. If you walked in the store and saw the perfect bat that you wanted on the first shelf you would pick it up, pay for it and leave. Now imagine you went to another store that said they sell bats. Let's say the second store had a shelf for bats, but no bats were on it. Instead they just have a sign telling you to go to the store next door for bats. Guess what you would do? You'd go next door. For a hight ctr, you want to be the store advertising bats with empty shelves. lol

Thanks. I assume that dp has tested their ad position and blending A LOT. My wild guess is that webmasters are so blind to ads that you have to break the rules that apply in virtually every other niche to get anyone to notice the ads. That's just a guess, but I bet it's true. That's why you can't make solid rules in this. Sometimes the norm just doesn't work for some markets.

Thank you.

 

Hi, Glenn Initially I wasn’t too sure about the issue on having too many ads on a page but I guess based on the explanation given by you, somehow I do think that is true. Limiting number of ad units does increase the chance for high paying ads to appear. Overall, nice info and I truly think you deserve the +rep.

 

Thank you!

In some very high paying niches (finance, legal, health, etc.), there can be many high paying advertisers competing for ad placement. In most niches though, that just isn't the case. It would really be best if only 2 advertisers were able to place ads on any given page, which would mean that the 2 highest bidding advertisers would appear. The problem with that though is that a small 2 ad unit would be much less likely to be clicked, so your eCPM would likely be low.

Even in the high paying niches though, sticking to 2 ads is usually the best idea. Not only because of the greater likelihood of cheap ads, but also because 2 many ads just dilute the page.

It's really smart to test the effect on your own site. To really get a good idea of the difference, most tests should be run for at least a week (unless your daily impressions are in the xx,xxx range and your site is very stable).

 

1st class information many thanks !!!

 

Some really good tips there...