What is Google Adsense CTR?

In the world of Internet marketing, CTR matters a lot. For Advertisers and for Publishers too. Advertisers role is to create such ad graphics or sales line, which should get more CTR and publishers role is to place the ad in such a way, which increases the CTR.

From a Blogger/Publisher point of view, CTR is one of those factor, which plays an important role in generating money and retaining the advertisers. If you failed to give enough click, your advertisers will run away. So, lets dive into the world of CTR and understand what it is.

I have been seeing people asking about this question in many forums so this will be helpful for many of my readers who are not aware of what is Click through rate?

What is CTR?

CTR stands for Click Though rate. In simple words it mean number of times an advertisement is clicked divided by number of time advertisement, ad unit or the page containing advertisement is viewed.

It is the percentage of No of clicks on advertisement and number of page views.

CTR = Number of clicks / Number of exposures.
CTR% = Number of clicks * 100 / # of exposures
So in simple words, if you have an ad running and it’s seen by 100 people but got only 5 clicks, your CTR is 5%. Point to be noted here the higher the percentage of CTR better advertisement you will get. So it’s advisable to place advertisement only at the place which is viewable and can be clicked easily.

Now, one of the most commonly asked question is what is Good CTR and I’m getting enough click on my Adsense but my revenue is very low. Let me cut out the myth about Adsense CTR here, getting too many clicks on Adsense ads will never guarantee good income, the key here is to target ads which gives good PPC. More like, creating blog post/Article with high CPC. On such ads, even few clicks will yield more money than 100 clicks.

Tips to Increase Google Adsense Revenue

Adsense is one of the top advertisement program for Bloggers. We have already talked about why Adsense and even for newbie, we have added complete guide to create Adsense account. Now, it’s time for moving one step further and learn some of the basic and some advance tips to Increase Adsense revenue. There are many tips which are basic but very effective.

One thing which I would like to suggest about placement of your ads is, make sure you don’t violate Adsense policies by putting ads in such a way, that it will make users to click it or never ask someone to click your own ads. Adsense new interface has some easy to use features, which will surely help you to boost your revenue.

Size/Location: 
This is one of the most common factor for getting low and high CTR. You should try putting Adsense ads around the content and above the fold. You can blend the ad with your site design and as I said, above the fold ads perform really great than below the ad fold.

One thing, which normally blogger ignore is link based ads. Link ads are different from banner ad and they don’t decrease the CTR of main ads, if optimized properly. I usually prefer to keep it on the header navbar. When you are designing a website for Adsense income, you should keep Adsense heatmap in your mind. This way you can easily create an adsense optimized themes and design for your new site.

Here are some of the Adsense sizes, which work out the most:

336 * 280 : Large Rectangle
300*250 :
728*90
160*600
As you can see, in Adsense world Size matters.

Organic Traffic. /U.S :
Adsense ads perform the best when your traffic source is from search engine. I also believe, interest based ads might not perform that great if you are getting direct traffic more. Many people complain about low CPC and low Adsense income despite of giving millions of impression/month. This is mostly have to do with CPC and traffic source. Start targeting traffic from countries like U.S.A, U.K and you will end up getting high CPC.

Image or Text Ads:
This is one of the myth of Adsense, that image ads work more. By blocking an ad type or ad category, you decrease the competition on your ad and this also decreases the eCPM of your ads. Prefer to use both the ad type.

Ads between post:
Though, this may give bad reader experience but if you in big time mood to monetize a dead site more and increase adsense revenue, this one works great. You can easily configure adsense ads to match with your page background and color and add 468*60 or text link ads in between post. You can also add 7-10px padding for not giving worse reading experience to your readers.

Placement targeting:
This is one tip which many blogger are not doing. When you create a channel, you have an option to add more details about your ad types and put it for auction in the market by opting for placement targeting. This increases the competition and ad value on your site goes up. To enable this for every custom channel, you have to do it manually. To enable placement targeting on your existing cust. channel, you need to login to your Adsense account > My ads > Custom > Custom Channels. Now, click on one of the name and a screen like this will pop up. Simply add the details and put a tick mark on placement targeting.

Adsense Blacklist URL’s :
There are many advertisers/site which pays really less/click. There used to be a site for getting the Adsense ad black list, but if you have a list of yours or you know about site which perform really bad, you can block that advertiser URL. I have done it and it improved my revenue by 10% in a week time. This also include blocking your competitor ads to display on your site.

2015's 10 Best Google Adsense Alternatives

Here are some of the best Google Adsense Alternatives you can try to monetize your website without using Google Adsense, and I’ll tell you how they work and why you should consider them, so let’s start:

I recently discovered Revenue Hits and it looks like a great contender. I signed up and was quickly contacted by a manager to see how their ad platform for publishers work and they have a ton of features to make money. Revenue hits is a Performance Ad network, which means they pay you for results (CPA which is great for many niches), however, they have CPM and CPC models too. Revenue hits has an interesting platform that learns from your Ads so if you give them a try make sure to keep their ads running for 2-4 days to get the best results. Another great thing is that they have different monetization channels available. You can create banner ads, sliders, pop -unders, buttons and more. Revenue Hits pays on a NET 30 basis and they issue payments via wire, Paypal and Payoneer! Create your account and get started in just a few minutes !

Note: I just moved Revenue Hits to the first place because some publishers have been generating more than $100 per month in their first try with Revenue Hits. Some of them are already generating a lot more, and there’s no entry barrier such as with Adversal (500k monthly traffic). I’d recommend to and let us know how it does for you!

9. Infolinks

Infolinks is a Pay per click advertisement network that allows you to make money through your blog based on specific keywords. Infolinks indexes your pages and automatically add some hiperlinks in your text. Of course, since this isn’t a CPM program, it might take you a while to start earning a regular passive income through it, but it’s still an alternative to Adsense. They can pay you via Paypal, Wire Transfer, Check Western Union, ACH and Payoneer and there’s an initial limit of $50. Infolinks is great for big websites and it works in English, Spanish, French and German websites.

8. Amazon Associates

You can make a good amount of money from Amazon, especially in Christmas and other holidays.
Amazon is the biggest online store in the world, so they must be doing something good. Well, if you have a website that talks about any product that can be found on Amazon, then Amazon associates could work for you. Amazon allows you to put dynamic image ads to your blog, so that you can promote them and while this isn’t a Pay-per-click or CPM program, it will pay you a small commission for everything they sell from your links. So let’s say you have a blog about Apple products and you put an ad driving them to buy an iPod or just a cable. If they buy it, an small commission will be for you. So if you sell a $10 cable you might receive a few cents, but sell a $1500 Laptop and you might receive $100. The good thing is that everything they buy through your link (even if it isn’t the product you recommended at first) will generate a commission for your. the only con I find with Amazon, is that they need to send you a check that could take weeks to arrive to your home, unless you live in the United Stated of America where you can provide your Bank account. You can use this with Adsense at the same time.

7. BuySellAds

If you’re thinking on selling ad spaces from your website but you have no clients to land on BuySellAds might be the right network for you. buySellAds allows you to sell a space unit to many customers depending on the kind of traffic they want. so, if your blog has space for 4 ads, you can publish them here and wait until someone wants to buy your ad. While this can lead to a good income, this also means you need a good quantity of visitors and page views if you want to be appealing on BSA. BSA pays 75% of the revenue generated and you can get your payment via paypal twice a month, without any starting limit.

6. Qadabra

Qadabra is a performance based advertisement network created for publishers to monetize their websites and traffic. I recently discovered Qadabra and their platform is simple and easy to use. Qadabra provides different ad sizes and they have a pop up option. They support international traffic with great fill rates and they pay via: paypal ($1 minimum payout), payoneer prepaid card ($20 minimum) and wire transfer ($500 minimum). So it’s a great option for starters if you’re using paypal. I got approved for Qadabra in less than 2 minutes. Register here.

5. Chitika

The reason I put Chitika on the number 3 of this list, is because Chitika is very similar to Adsense. they allow you to customize your ads, and it only serves contextual ads. One good thing is that you can use it along with Adsense and there are no problems at all. Chitika pays via Paypal ($10 USD minimum, which is good for starters) or via check ($50 minimum). If I were to recommend an ads service as an alternative to Adsense, Chitika would be my first choice, hands down. Chitika can pay you via paypal if you need. Sign up here and get your account approved fast and easily! Bonus: Check my Chitika earnings here.

4. Tribal Fusion

Tribal Fusion is no small network. They work on a CPM basis and you need a lot of traffic to get accepted (500,000 unique visitors per month). This is a great alternative for those working with viral websites (read my case study) or sites that already have a lot of traffic. There are some other similar networks but I think Tribal Fusion is one of the best.

3. Propeller Ads Media

Propeller Ads is one of the biggest pop-under networks available. They started working on 2011 and quickly developed into one of the biggest networks with great CPMs. They specialize in monetizing websites for the following niches: entertainment, videos/movies, games, dating, finances, software, gambling and more. If you’ve got one of this sites, you could make more money with Propeller than with Adsense. They also have banners but the pop unders work better overall. Also, if you’ve got mobile traffic, they’re a great Adsense alternative as they work closely with ad networks that monetize apps and mobile services leading to huge ROIs and great CPMs too.

Propeller pays on a NET 30 basis and they have a great fill rate for tier 2-3 countries. So if you’re struggling to monetize traffic from countries like India, Singapore, Turkey, South Africa, etc. Propeller has a big inventory for them too. Sign up as a Publisher with Propeller Ads here.

2. Adversal

Adversal is a great alternative of Adsense and works as great as Chitika. They have good banners and the CTR and revenue adapts to get the best results for your website. I’ve seen the Ads on Adversal have a good CTR and they have good image ads too. This is probably the Ad network which seems to work better for those looking for a replacement of Google Adsense. It works decently with other languages too (Chitika doesn’t).  You account gets approved really fast and they also have Pop under /CPM ads as an option. Note: Adversal requires a website with a minimum of 50,000 page views per month, but they have proven to work really well. I earn over $500-1000 per month. They also pay via paypal.