CTR goes down with traffic?

Hi,

My CTRs have gone up slightly from earlier with the addition of images - but it seems like the more traffic I have, the lower the CTR. I can't figure out why. Could someone please look at my placement and suggest any changes?

Website is: Core Duo Info

Thanks a ton.

 

Well this depends on the type of adds displayed and their title. Users who visit your website can click on the adds when they feel that they are useful

 

Same thing happened to me when my traffic went up CTR dropped down. Site looks very nice and ads are placed good too. You can maybe put big rectangle right under that link unit on the top and see what is going to happen, if that doesn't work try something else, maybe you can remove some ads from your site. It looks to me like you have to much ads.

 

I made some small adjustments with the ads that appear in the posts. Also, I was wondering if a wide ad would work better than a link unit on the top (under the images). What are people's thoughts? Thanks for everyones comments and advice.

 

The reason is because high traffic is not converting to clicks. Adsense actually penalizes you (by lowering cpm) if your traffic is not converting to clicks. Say you have 2,000 visitors and 200 of them click on ads. Your ctr (click through rate) will be good compared to if your traffic was 20,000 with only 200 clicks. The higher traffic/lower clicks combo would lower your ctr which, in turn would lower your cpm.

The only sites that benefit from higher traffic/lower clicks are Premium sites with, for example, 1 million visitors per day.

 

I think that if traffic is quality, CTR shouldn't go down.

 

Quality traffic simply means more people are clicking on ads and ads are converting to sales. But if you have a high traffic site (250,000 visitors a day) it is next to impossible to get quality clicks unless 10,000 or more visitors click the ads and convert to sales. Higher traffic only benefits premium sites. Smaller sites are penalized when their traffic increases but ctr remains consistent.

Which is why you are seeing so many complaints about revenue dropping with higher traffic. Google knows that smaller publishers are submitting their links to sites like Digg.com which increases traffic but is not necessarily increasing clicks. So those sites are penalized. Just my 0.2 cents.

 

Hmmm. So how does one figure out if the traffic is 'quality' or not? My traffic is mostly organic google (its a fairly new site so its not much). Additionally, higher traffic, i suppose, should lead me to try other forms of advertising. How would you go about doing this? Where would I sell links etc?

 

You'll know your traffic is quality if you have a decent CTR and CPM. Quality traffic means your traffic is targeted and lots of visitors are interested in your relevant ads and the clicks convert to sales. Adsense penalizes smaller sites with high traffic, low click conversion rates. So the alternative is to seek other avenues of advertising that pay per CPM (1000 impressions). Search the forums for those other avenues of revenue.