I've seen a number of programs claiming to get you 50% or better CTR. I can see with the right kind of traffic and the right layout (actually just as Google recommends) getting may be 20% or better but 50%??? If you know what they recommend, please pass it along. I suspect it is something that is agains TOS altough it may be some great ad copy or some subtle call to action in the content.
That kinda CTR is very difficult to attain unless you have very fantastic ad placement and also if your site receives high traffic and you are a Google premium publisher, then chances are there that you could reach that kinda CTR after customizing the ad units. Take a look at moneycontrol.com, they have excellent ad blending with menus and other stuff. I accidently happen to click on their links many a times thinking that they were part of menu. The ads on that site are highly targeted.
How would being a premium publisher improve your CTR? I understand you have a little more control but we have pretty good control already. I would estimate moneycontrol.com has more like a 0.50% CTR based on the fact they have so much information and links on the page. You may have clicked on an ad but there are so many places to click accidently that the CTR would never be 20% or more.
Being a premium publisher lets you customize your ad units to a great extent. You can make them look like links from your own site, highly targeted, ad units which are not available to common public and much more.. Not just little more control, lot of control over your ad units ... As long as your ads are highly targeted, CTR would naturally be on upper side..
I have one popular site that has an average CTR of 20% but many pages within that site have CTRs well in excess of that pushing 30 - 40%, and in addition to this I run affiliate ads in some pretty hot spots on the page, and have Kontera running as well - so I guess when you consider it all up the CTR is getting pretty high, but all the pages contain great content as well - it's just fairly optimised for ads. As for techniques well it just comes down to placing your ads in the hottest locations and having lots of search engine traffic. A fairly common technique is pushing your content down the page so essentially it is only ads above the fold so that is the first thing they see and they have to scroll to get to the juice. That would probably have to be the biggest tip past the source of traffic, good ad relevance, basic blending and prominent positioning.
I'm averaging about 45%-55% CTR consistently on a few of my sites so it is possible to do. Mainly pushing the content down as Burta said, good luck
Plenty of people report 20% or more. I am asking about what the approaches that claim 50% to 100%. So the question is aimed at those who have read some of these reports or have found the technique on their own.