Google AdSense CTR Explained
If you are running advertising on your website/ weblog, or plan to, one of the more interesting web metrics is CTR, or Click-Through Rate. It’s important from a financial point of view and refers to the percentage of clicks on an ad (or any link in fact) compared to the number of impressions said ad (or link) received. [NOTE: I should have posted this before my How Long Before I Make X Dollars Per Day? article. I’m posting this for posterity only.]
For example, if your home page receives 1000 pageviews for a given day, and the same 5 ads appear on that page all day, all the time, then each ad receives 1000 impressions for that day. To calculate CTR for each ad, you divide the number of clicks for that ad by the number of impressions. So if ad 1 received 20 clicks, then the CTR is (20/1000)x100% = 2.00%.
If you are calculating CTR for an entire channel, there a number of ways that this is calculated, but not all of them are accurate. A channel, by the way, can refer to a number of things, at least for Google AdSense. The simplest definition is that a channel refers to a domain, subdomain, or URL. For Google AdSense, you can also sub-divide pages by ad type or colour, etc., to define more granular custom channels.
Let’s talk about a domain channel. Track your channels throughout the day, maybe every hour or two hours. Just for one day. When you get the first click (or more) on a channel, record the indicated CTR, then watch the channel closely. As the day progresses, the CTR for that channel will change. Whether it goes up or down depends, of course, on further traffic and clicks. In my experience, CTR for a channel drops by the end of the day.
Overall, the day’s CTR for a given channel isn’t that important per se. What’s more important is a graph of the CTR for each of your channels over a range of time, say at least 6 months. You can also calculate the overall CTR for all your channels, and then graph it over time as well. The latter CTR, on a daily basis, is equal to the total ad clicks for all channels, divided by the total pageviews for all channels, times 100%.
If you are very serious about tracking your CTR, you will want to create an MA (Moving Average) or MMA (Multiple Moving Averages) graph for daily CTR values over a long period of time.
What I’ve noticed for my blogs is that my overall network CTR has been dropping gradually since its peak in Nov 2005. This is probably due to having too many blogs with just a few posts, which are not generating many clicks. It’s been rumoured that this lack of performance can result in lower AdSense earnings per click for your other weblogs. Consider looking at the CTR or CTR MMA graphs for each of your weblogs individually. For instance, I know that some of my blogs are actually doing better over time. I’ve considered removing advertising from those that are not performing.
Technorati Tags: mathblog, math blog, CTR, ad revenue, google adsense, MA, MMA, multiple moving average, adsense performance
