Hey I've been reading online and I don't quite understand it's importance. Are there any simple resources that talk about these things? Think, Web for Dummies. LOL
If your worried about losing money you should be. Adsense is seriously not for beginners, and works best if you have an established niche, with websites to support it. Some people will try telling you its an easy game, or whatever - but it isn't the best gamble for new entrepreneurs. I've actually did this post a few times and kept having trouble linking to sites, but this is a good link: http://beyondgoogleadsense.blogspot.com/2009/07/adsense-ctr-cpc-ecpm-google-adsense.html Just google CPC vs CTR, and different variations. Google makes money from the CPC, whereas the CTR will tell you how many people visit the site, and clicked the ad. The CTR lets you and Google know how likely a visitor is to click - which ups the price of the ad, due to its popularity - which raises your CPC. A high CTR is a good indication that your ad will be successful, provided you market it in the appropriate place, where interested people will see it. Again there are so many variations when thinking about a gameplan for adsense.
Well, sorta...unless you can manage to somehow have a channel for each individual ad, the ctr is only going to give you an idea of how many visits to a page/pages with AN ad/ads on it and clicked one of THEM. The CTR that you see vs the CTR that let's google measure performance of a PARTICULAR ad are two very different things.
Well yes and no with Adsense likely yes. A high CTR may indicate ad success such as having good ad copy or a great sales letter thus driving a click to the product. It does not guarantee a sale.