Increase Adsense CTR (Click Through Rate)

Increase Adsense CTR

Increase Adsense CTR

One of the smartest things you can do as a webmaster is to increase your Adsense Click Through Rate, or CTR. This rate is measured as a percentage of clicks per 100 page views. An increase from 1% to 2% alone is enough to double your adsense revenue for that ad unit. 

OK, so how do we do it? How do we increase your adsense ctr and by proxy your revenue? Well the first thing you need to do is set up channels, for specific areas on your site. You have probably already done this, so if you have click here to continue on to the next section. 

OK If you are still reading then you need help setting up adsense channels. When setting up a channel it is important to use some descriptive pattern when naming the item. I use the following format
(Ad Size) (Website) (Location). For an example we’ll pretend we own a domain bluewidget, we want to implement 728×90 header banner in our forum. I would then create a channel called 728×90 bluewidget forum. 

Using a standard channel naming convention will help you in the future. Messy names for channels are fine if you just have 1 or 2, but when you have hundreds you’ll quickly become overwhelmed. Channels then let you see the exact ctr of that ad space.

Assuming you understand or have channels set up correctly then the next thing you want to do is to modify those ads.  When modifying ads you want to look at, and modify the 4 A’s of online advertisement. 

  1. Ad Size
  2. Ad Location
  3. Ad Color
  4. Ad Content

Ad Size– the size of the ad is very important. Make the ad size to small and no one will pay attention to it. Make the ad size to big and I will make your page look like crap. Somewhere in between (in the Goldilocks Zone) is where we want to find ourselves. 

Experience tells me that the following ad sizes work best, and have the highest ctr. 

  1. 336×280
  2. 300×250
  3. 250×250

Experience has also show me that the following ad sizes are the worst, and have the lowest ctr. 

  1. 728×90
  2. 468×60
  3. 120×600

As far as I’m concerned there are 2 main reasons that the ads above work or don’t work. 

  1. Ad Blindness- the bad ad sizes have been so over used for such a long time that we no longer even pay attention to content in that size and shape. We apply a mental ad filter.
  2. Reading Left to Right- We read left to right, if the first item in a  line is not interesting we skip to the next line. So if we don’t like the first ad in a 728×90 ad placement we’ll simply skip it over and go to the next line. This would also mean that the taller ad (120×600) we mentioned should have a slightly higher ctr than the wider ones. The 120×600 is the best of the worst in that sense.

Please continue to the next page 🙂