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Entrecard Effects Adsense CTR

13 Feb

Posted by madWAHM as Webmaster Stuff

I’ve been a member of the new Entrecard program for a couple weeks now and really love the traffic it generates to my blog!

With that being said, I have noticed a huge hit to my Google Adsense CTR. Since a lot of card droppers will just drive-by and drop their card – they are not sticking around to read posts or visit advertiser links – this causes a rock-bottom Adsense CTR.

As a further result, since I use Adsense on a couple other sites, it was costing me my Adsense revenue.

So as to continue to benefit by Entrecard traffic but reduce the damage to my Adsense CTR, I did some rearranging of my adsense ads on this blog.

First, I removed the ads from Main Index, Header and Sidebar. Then, instead, I added the ads to my Pages and Single Posts.

The way I see it, visitors who click on pages and single posts are the ones who are interested in your content and are more likely to visit the advertiser and sponsor links anyways.

The results were immediate! Now, I continue to benefit from the Entrecard traffic while keeping my Adsense CTR in check and at a higher performing rate.

How about your Adsense CTR? Have you been affected? What have you done about it?

10 Responses

Michael

February 13th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
1

My revenue increased quite a lot actually.
bloggista

February 14th, 2008 at 1:02 am
2

Hey MadWAHM! I’m glad you’re now a fan with Entrecard. Well for newbies like me, it does help a lot. But you’re right, I also noticed the sudden drop of my AdSense CTR, but it’s fine with me now, since I’m more into generating traffic to the site. Its still a one month-old site, though the numbers are not that much good, but they’re promising.

Hey I got a post & survey on Valentines day (night) blogging. Feel free to drop by and vote and leave a comment. The reward is very cheap though – just 5 entrecard credits. LOL. But you’re 300 today plus 5 from me may just be fine for a comment. Haha. See ya and more power!
HotMama

February 14th, 2008 at 5:53 am
3

Hi! I dropped by to thank you for popping into my site. Then, I saw this post and I liked it. Thanks for sharing this – now I know about how EntreCard-generated traffic can affect Adsense.

I have an Adsense account as well, but am not giving it much though (i.e., i’m gonna make money out of it or something). I don’t know yet if I have any earnings at all.

By the way, what is CTR? Pardon my ignorance, it just goes to show how naive I am about these things.

Thanks!
Nishadha

February 14th, 2008 at 9:20 am
4

Hmm , I never thought about it much , but Its a good point you are making , maybe I’ll change it in my blog too .
madWAHM

February 14th, 2008 at 10:35 am
5

HotMama, your CTR is your click through ratio. The higher your CTR percentage, the more money you make.

Basically, your CTR is based on the number of impressions (times the ad is displayed) vs the number of click-throughs from the ad.

Say your adsense ads generate 100 impressions on your site. Now, if only 2 people click on those ads, your CTR is only 2%. You’re not making very much for those clicks. But, if your CTR is 30% you’re making a whole lot more per click.

Get it kinda sorta?
BizGiftGuru

February 16th, 2008 at 3:25 am
6

I run adsense only on some of my sites, but recently the click rates went up. it also seems that more expensive ads are displaying on some of my sites as I have more 0.10 worth clicks than those 0.01 ones. I see no particular reason for this…
Light Links

February 16th, 2008 at 6:01 am
7

Its a good point, especially as (so I’ve heard) that AdSense will pay you on a special lower pay scale if your click through rate drops too low.
Multiple Google Adsense Accounts by mad WAHM

February 21st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
8

[...] a previous post I was complaining about how using Entrecard Effects Adsense CTR and as a result of running both Entrecard and Google Adsense ads on this blog it was wreaking havoc [...]
Entrepreneur

February 22nd, 2008 at 8:00 am
9

I’ve heard people mention this before but I don’t know if its true or not. I can’t find it in any of google’s T&C’s that your CTR revenue is affected if people do a drive-by. However, at the same time, I have noticed that I can get 15 clicks and just get 50 cents in my pocket these days. But I thought that’s just because the cost for ads for make-money keywords especially has become really cheap because there are now so many make-money blogs.
madWAHM

February 22nd, 2008 at 9:13 am
10

Entrepreneur, Google doesn’t state or explain this anywhere on their site – not that I know of, but it’s real.

Other things can factor in besides the CPC for keywords like a high bounce rate (which Entrecard definitely causes). Google can and will also smart price your account. This relates to your click results in sales and leads. If this is really low, Google will smart price your account and you’ll earn little to nothing on the clicks you do get, regardless of the CPC of your keywords.