Too Many Other Ads Can Lower Your CTR

I learned some valuable lesson with Adsense on my site: if you have ads or content that pays less, but might be more enticing than the Adsense ads, you might be seriously hurting your CTR/eCPM.

My CTR used to be around 2%. For the months of September and October I placed a horizontal row of 5 or 6 very closely related books (Amazon) to my topic across the top of every page. The books were very compelling looking with provocative titles - and I got a big bump in book sales, but Amazon as we all know, pays peanuts. My CTR plummeted to .60%

I took them off the beginning of this month and my CTR is back to normal. All the other metrics - traffic, etc have been same as ever.

Moral of the story: if there are too many other ads/products, way too much content, or anything that might be that much more interesting than the ads (like links to external sites), it could likely affect your CTR.

(aside note: one more thing I did was to opt out of "Interest-based Ads" and "Third Party Ads" in the "Account Settings" 2 days ago, and my CTR/eCPM is even higher today.)

 

thanks for sharing, please kindly look at my question. Is ads size can affect the eCPM, then what is the most prescribe size of ads. Thanks in advance

 

yes, i noticed too since years ago. And therefore i prefer use only one PPC advertising on single website

 

Thanks for sharing your esperience.
I also have experienced same effect when using other ads also.
So now i use Adsnese and intext ads only.

 

yes...it will lower your CTR.... especially when you combine ads from different company like Amazon widgets, Adsense and others PPC ads...
just stick with AdSense...f your site focused on content...

 

I think it all has to do with distraction. I have articles that keep the reader focused on the topic and leave them hungry for more information. But then if there are ads that provoke more curiosity than Adsense ads, the CTR goes down and all the other metrics with it.

sikatangpinoy: I think the large rectangles are still the best for me. I only use one large rectangle per page, blended. YMMV

 

Thanks for sharing the info ;-D