Written on November 15th, 2007 at 11:11 am by Darren Rowse
AdSense CTR - Has it Changed for You?
Yesterday it was revealed that AdSense were making the clickable portions of their Ad Units Smaller. Today we’re seeing these changes rolling out on different publishers sites. It seems that this means different things for different ad unit sizes. For example 468×60 and 234×60 ad units still seem clickable on the text of ads - perhaps because they don’t have a URL on these ads. All other ad units that I’ve seen just have the title and URL clickable.
So my question to you is - have you noticed any decreases in CTR yet?
We probably won’t see the full impact of the changes in today’s earning results as they’ve been rolling out during the day - but my own CTR is lower today than any other day for this month. Having said this - I’ve had lower days (2 were lower in October) - so I won’t really know what impact it’s had for a few days as things do tend to rise and fall.
How about you - is your CTR up or down today?
75 Responses to “AdSense CTR - Has it Changed for You?”
Andy C
November 15th, 2007 11:21 am
Way down. 0.04 to 0.00. Sigh.
Thomas Sinfield
November 15th, 2007 11:31 am
I have actually had more clicks than ever. But that is only because I just started promoting the website. Will be interesting to hear how it has affected people…
Rt the fitness guy
November 15th, 2007 12:05 pm
Darren,
Mine is down to the point where the ads really aren’t worth the space they are taking up on the site. Google continue to do this kind of thing. Very one sided business. CTR is down and EPM is the same.
I am pretty bored with Adsense now.
RT
Antoine Khater
November 15th, 2007 12:06 pm
It was down earlier in the day but now it seems I’m kind of “catching up” if all stays like that I think I will be at my average today.
Jake
November 15th, 2007 12:06 pm
My CTR is down but my earnings per click is up a tad. I am not sure if this is Google playing with the percentage they payout or what. Advertisers haven’t adjusted their rates yet as I believe they will with better quality clicks.
Dom
November 15th, 2007 12:15 pm
Averaging across all my sites, my CTR appears to be up about 50% compared to the rest of the week - which I find a little odd to say the least!
Rajiv
November 15th, 2007 12:26 pm
CTRs are definitely going to get a objectionable dip!.BUt that’s not due to the new rules put up by Google.There’s something else….
By redefining ‘a click’,Google are actually trying to get rid of accidental clicks.Now they pay publishers if their click is genuine(reader intentionally clicks an ad).Since herre we only lose accidental clicks,CTR doesn’t get affected much!.
But other side of online advertsing is that people know what are ads and what they do!.They doesn’t want others to earn money for their click.They may give away a click or two as a pay for extra-ordinary content.SO,a click is getting very hard day by day.
SO would you still believe that CTR would increase some day……?
David Scrivner
November 15th, 2007 12:32 pm
My clicks are down for sure. I have noticed that my impressions are down too though. I am not sure this has to do with the ads as much as it does with my slowing traffic. I am starting to get frustrated with it. I want it to be on the up and up and I am not sure how to really get my name out there. I am trying to make a good site with good content, but sometimes I feel like people don’t like it because not too many people visit it. Anyway, way off topic. The CTR has seemed down, but the amount of clicks I get anyways may not be enough to really determine whether it is significant.
Paul William Tenny
November 15th, 2007 1:02 pm
My CTR has crashed, from 3-4% (+/- 1%) to 0.20% - clicks in the mid 20’s to just 1. $2-3 per day average down to seven cents.
I haven’t had numbers this bad since I started my site three months ago, and if this continues, it won’t even be covering the extremely cheap hosting costs - that says a lot.
Randy Brown
November 15th, 2007 1:13 pm
my CTR is actually a bit higher than average… maybe the changes haven’t rolled-out to this end of the world yet..
Kenneth Holland
November 15th, 2007 1:21 pm
Everything is up for me today.
Leo
November 15th, 2007 1:48 pm
It looks like mine is down from 22% (over the last month) to 11% today.
Serge Kozak
November 15th, 2007 1:48 pm
I have not seen the change yet on any of my sites/blogs. What I mean by that is the ads are still area clickable. Will this change happen automatically?
Were is the easy money I ask you? Were?! Hahaha
Joe
November 15th, 2007 1:51 pm
Both of mine seemed to be up… but I don’t know how long that will last! I hope it does, this is a good thing for me!
Blackysky
November 15th, 2007 2:26 pm
I’m surprise that people answer that fast I mean wait at least 1 pr 2 months to see the whole picture .. give adsense a chance nobody was yelling when the money was in :)
maybe adsense have other plan .. I think google is not stupid most of their income come from advertising …..
Rick Bjarnason
November 15th, 2007 3:07 pm
Seems like everything is about normal so far today.
Jesse Panganiban
November 15th, 2007 3:14 pm
Are there any AD alternatives other than Google?
Gisele B.
November 15th, 2007 3:25 pm
I started the month at over 45% and the last two days have been at 8-10%. At this rate, November will be a ridiculously low month.
Blackysky may have a valid point, but if he is right, it’s going to hurt for the next few months.
Gisele
http://www.mybeautymatch.com
TV-Stream.org
November 15th, 2007 3:44 pm
Definitely earnings have gone done. Very disappointing. Earning s dropped from $70-80/day to $35/40 day with my combined sites. I use many different programs from affiliate to other ad networks and I am considering using them exclusively.
Ben
November 15th, 2007 3:47 pm
My actual percentage is down about 50% but the average per click has doubled, so money has stayed about the same. I guess that is what Google wants, better leads and higher revenues and payouts.
johnCard
November 15th, 2007 3:50 pm
damn, and i had all those accidental clicks.
jlf
November 15th, 2007 3:59 pm
The CTR and the number of clicks is stable in November, and up compared to October. Google’s changes didn’t seem to have any impact on my stats.
JLF
http://www.42k195.com
Eric Grey
November 15th, 2007 4:27 pm
Both my CTR and my revenue has increased MANY fold. I haven’t changed anything about my ads, but I did just upgrade my Wordpress installation - maybe that impacted something somehow.
I should mention that my traffic has stayed relatively steady.
Eric
Alisha
November 15th, 2007 4:30 pm
Mine has actually stayed the same at about 2-3%, so I’m not complaining, yet. But, it may be too early to tell.
Alain
November 15th, 2007 4:38 pm
My blog hasn’t seen the change in format at the time of this writing.
I’m going to need to find some other monetization strategies pretty quickly though, since all I use is Google Adsense.
Its hard to find solid ad solutions that appeal to my niche though.
Alex C
November 15th, 2007 5:05 pm
Well, maybe it is a coincidence, but I had a pretty bad “click day”. By the way, my traffic was better than ever today and I was expecting to see good new numbers on my AdSense account… What a deception.!
marhgil
November 15th, 2007 5:21 pm
CTR hasn’t changed for me yet. I could see that the changes were not yet fully implemented on my ads.
Tom Hanna
November 15th, 2007 6:44 pm
My CTR and CPM have both been on a roller coaster ride for two months. Very high one day and abysmally low the next, varying by up to 300% between the high and low days of the week with no discernible pattern (i.e. weekday/weekend, posting/no posting etc.). So, the fact that my CTR was higher today than yesterday doesn’t necessarily mean much.
Slightly off topic, I will say that returning Adsense to a page I tested YPN ads on after the great Page Rank dustup made more money in a day than YPN made on the same page in a couple of weeks.
Selbourne Designing
November 15th, 2007 7:26 pm
not seen any change yet, but then the CTR is as low as before
The Investor's Journal
November 15th, 2007 7:51 pm
No significant change here.
Markk
November 15th, 2007 8:02 pm
Blackysky is making sense. C’mon, you people don’t jump to conclusion so fast. Give it a bit more time and see how it goes.
Michael
November 15th, 2007 8:31 pm
It’s obviously way to easy to jump to conclusions after barely a day, but I have noticed increase in my CTR and earnings, yay!
side-line
November 15th, 2007 8:48 pm
no changes here either.
markowe
November 15th, 2007 8:48 pm
[quote]Averaging across all my sites, my CTR appears to be up about 50% compared to the rest of the week - which I find a little odd to say the least![/quote]
Could it be that those of you who have blogging-related sites are seeing a rise in CTR, as your ad-savvy visitors test out the new ads?!
Anthony Lawrence
November 15th, 2007 10:20 pm
It kind of figures that Google would do something like this right at the time I’m evaluating Pubmatic :-)
This makes it very hard to know what the heck is going on. Monday I had a good day, 30% over expected. Tuesday was average, as was Wednesday, though maybe a little lower than usual.
So was Monday due to Pubmatic and Tuesday and Wed should have been high but were pulled down by this Google change? Who knows.
I just ride the waves.. whatever happens, happens.
Paidforwritedown
November 15th, 2007 11:56 pm
Its now highly targeted, no CTR will obviously changed who’s site ads are not highly targeted.
66tx
November 16th, 2007 12:08 am
This makes it very hard to know what the heck is going on. Monday I had a good day, 30% over expected. Tuesday was average, as was Wednesday, though maybe a little lower than usual.
James
November 16th, 2007 12:32 am
The changes are not active on all my sites and not all my adsense blocks, so far I’ve noticed no change at all!
Katy
November 16th, 2007 1:11 am
My CTR seems to have trebled. I’m not complaining!
Linus
November 16th, 2007 2:18 am
My CTR has dropped for sure. I have had a day here and there that made no sense. I sense that the network is being updated and my stats are not accurate at times. Per click has gone up which has offset some of the lost clicks. I think that we will all need to tweak and figure out what works.
Dave
November 16th, 2007 2:47 am
I find that my adsense income is so volatile at the best of times, that trying to ascertain whether the changes google are making is having any impact after just one day is impossible.
I guess when you are a small fish in a big pond, the smallest ripples can send your income up or down by a large percentage. When you’re that big fish, those ripples may not even register.
In other words, for those of us not making a fortune, the direction the wind is blowing can affect income, let alone changes to the way ads work. If you are a big earner, it might be much easier to spot variations based on changes google makes to its ads, as you are unaffected by other outside influences to the same extent that smaller publishers are.
Does that make sense?
Oak
November 16th, 2007 2:49 am
It would be good to distinct the following:
- Are you doing any campaigns (link or ad etc) that counter / change any possible effects of the adsense changes;
- Are all ad units changed in the new format or just a few.
I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions before at least a few weeks have passed.
Jimson Lee
November 16th, 2007 3:44 am
No changes yet, but my ads have not changed.
The higher Canadian dollar-lower US dollar *IS* affecting my revenue!
Back in Nov 2001, the exchange rate was 1.40!
Angela (Cottage Magpie)
November 16th, 2007 4:05 am
Weirdly, I’ve made more money today on Adsense than on any other day in the last year, and that’s before 9am my time! It’s still very small amount of money, so you could write it off as an anomaly, but it caught my attention!
~Angela :-)
Harshad
November 16th, 2007 5:31 am
No changes here yet.
Dean @ Technical Itch
November 16th, 2007 7:07 am
A small drop in CTR compared with yesterday but overall for this month not much difference, although slightly down on October figures. The GBR Pound being so strong against the USD Dollar doesn’t help either!
Stephanie
November 16th, 2007 7:59 am
I’m seeing a small drop, but not particularly outside the normal range of variation. It will take a bit of time to see if it’s a serious change.
Planet Berry
November 16th, 2007 11:37 am
We haven’t seen a big drop today. But Im sure its coming. This is an interesting move. On the one hand I can see their position but then on the other I expect them to pay us more for more pinpoint targeting of the real estate we are now renting out…..Im sure that will happen!
geomark
November 16th, 2007 7:37 pm
My CTR dropped by about 15% today. No increase in RPC. My lowest earnings all year.
Over the last year I’ve seen a slow but steady decrease in RPC and earnings. Now this hit to CTR. AdSense may be reaching the end of its usefulness.
Krishna Srinivasan
November 17th, 2007 2:00 am
I guess not all the adsense accounts are rolled out. For my site all the adblocks have changed with new format. I am seeing severe drop in the revenue. I am lossing morethan 50% compare to previous earnings. This is very early to decide. I am sure this will say get out for the small publisher like bloggers and people running tons of ads without good contents.
Krishna Srinivasan
November 17th, 2007 2:12 am
Today is my blackday after starting adsense. Yday it was $100. I think today i can hit only $25. I have very tough time to optimize my ads. If anyone have ideas please post it here. This change will make new wave in the adsense world. Infact this is good for long trem. We have to bare this low atleast for few months.
Joel Strellner
November 17th, 2007 5:35 am
My CTR has dropped 1.67% lower compared to usual. CPC has dropped 10 cents per click.
Today is the 4th worst day of the year so far… but the other 3 worst days were days that we were doing split testing with Adsense.
I will be dropping Adsense if they don’t fix this by Jan. 1.
Rick Brewster
November 17th, 2007 7:49 am
Earnings are down upwards of 50% (hard to say due to natural daily variance). CTR is lower. However, it seems logical that earnings should gradually go back up to where they were as advertisers see value in paying more to get those higher quality clicks.
Darnell Clayton
November 17th, 2007 10:45 am
My earnings started to go down, but have since recovered (within a day!).
My Advide: Post more often than usual, or put more quality into the stories and your earnings will return.
~Darnell
Andy of HoboTraveler.com
November 17th, 2007 10:52 am
This is a very interesting post, a friend sent it to me as being important. My first thought was, big or small, who cares, a person who read the advertisement and is trying to click will get it to work. Oh yea, then I remembered, many people put ad so close to other ads they get accidental clicks.
I have a techie that works for me, i give him huge chat lectures about thoughts like this. I said I make good money from from google. Please do not tempt them to ban me, I could lose my whole income because of some sneaky methods. I try to set policy that all adsense has to have a good distance between it and the text, I want zero accidental clicks. I wish it was that easy to just say, get the distance this far.
Google does not tell you the rules, my advice is to make more blog post and make the on topic aspect better. I am starting to know that many post on my blog is a problem. They go off topic and the density of keywords is decreased, and then googles ads are confused. (hmm does this comment box have spell check…very good.)
I also thought, so 99 percent went from making 1 dollar to making 99 cents. I wanted to say to my friend, focus on making on making more pages, the more good content pages you make, the more money. Try to get honest clcks and somehow google knows and likes you. My clicks did not go down. I have about .. oops. I thinks TOS of google.com I am not suppose to talk about this.
My advice is get rid of any accidentally clicks, and any confused person clicks, make them focus on the content. When they get bored, hope they click to leave on an ad.
Andy of HoboTraveler.com — Free Hotel WebPages
Barbra Sundquist
November 17th, 2007 11:26 am
I’m glad I read this post. Now I know it’s just not my site. My earnings are down >50%.
Nikolai
November 17th, 2007 12:41 pm
My CTR is way lower than usual. Right now it is 0.49%… Of course the earnings are much lower too.
Carlos
November 17th, 2007 1:07 pm
Down 40%, too bad. The worst thing is that in Latinamerica there’s no alternatives, we have adsense and nothing else, there’s no chitika, no amazon, … This is really awful
Saqi
November 17th, 2007 5:34 pm
My CTR and eCPM dropped incredibly :-S
Martin
November 17th, 2007 7:51 pm
I never quite understood why advertisers would raise the click price. I know I would not. I would say, great, more conversions with a lower budget. Lets put some more money into Adwords bidding on the same terms and the same click prices to get even more conversions.
Can’t see that this will benefit publishers at all in the long run.
Neale
November 17th, 2007 11:37 pm
I’m Seeing no change for the 15th & 16th
Oak
November 17th, 2007 11:41 pm
@ Martin
You said “I would say, great, more conversions with a lower budget”
That is not how it works. The good old “invisible hand” is at work here. More bidders should simply lead to a higher price. You are assuming some Kartel or agreement between buyers that is impossible.
Some other conspiracy theories from my twisted mind that are more likely:
- Perhaps Google concluded that there is an 80/20 rule, 20% of their publishers generate 80% of revenues and the new settings won’t hurt their top dogs and will shake out the smaller publishers where the profit margin (costs vs returns) is lower.
- also, like widgetbucks, Google is optimizing its installed base of publishers ridding itself of unattractive countries / publishers.
By running thier alghrithms they must have found reducing the click area is a much more elegant way to shake out unwanted publishers than a discrimination (country) based shake out that would potentially hurt their image (big evil Google etc.).
It is all geared towards some natural “Shake-out” IMHO. Just like Widgetbucks, Adsense wants a higher return per publisher shaking out the small publishers / publishers in countries that don’t convert well.
In the end, it’s business.
jack
November 18th, 2007 4:51 am
CTR way down, pay per click way down, impressions aren’t counted (compared to my traffic, it’s going towards *half* of my actual impressions).
Don’t know what is up, but Google really are messing with us.
Sockmoney
November 18th, 2007 5:53 am
I also just noticed my CTR is way down, but my pageviews are up… Less money… more stickiness.
Time to exploit some more CPM programs… ;-)
Amit
November 20th, 2007 3:27 am
My adsense earnings are severly affected, and I’m sure sooner or later, everyone will realize that Google ads are no longer worth the space given to them. Pls post about some good adsense alertnatives available internationally.
Yung
November 20th, 2007 3:49 am
My CTR has dropped from 9-10% to about 6% now which means that i’m earning 40% less everyday. I wanted to wait it out a couple days before I report and now my CTR has been steady at 6% for the past 4 days, never has been this low and today isn’t any better, I’m at about 2.5% CTR. I’ll be dropping adsense today and moving on.
People Finder
November 20th, 2007 5:17 am
My CTR and CPM have been cut by over half and I am usings Google ads that look like regular blue links with a white background - nothing out of the ordinary as far as background and border color. I hope the cost per click rises over the next few weeks or month as advertisers will be competing for fewer click now.
Planet Berry
November 20th, 2007 12:13 pm
We have found that as we add more Content to our site we gain a better CTR. We have our ups and downs but where we have good inbound links and intra-links combined with on-target content relevant to our business theme we see the climb.
David Edelman
November 21st, 2007 2:21 am
For those of you who are seeing a decrease, do you think it is because you were getting a lot of accidental clicks? Those accidental clicks decrease the value of all clicks. If more clicks were intentional and converted for advertisers, the value of each click would go up. As someone who only wants intentional click-throughs, I have not seen a decrease in CTR or revenue and don’t think I will. I am happy with the change.
I advertise ON Google AdSense as well, and I never want anyone to click on my ads and force me to pay unless they are actually interested in the content. Advertisers will love this change. It will increase their confidence in Google. And that’s in the best interest of the long-term health of the network.
TeamTutorials
November 21st, 2007 7:40 am
Way down. Here’s Hoping that EPC goes up in the long run.
Photoshop tutorials
November 22nd, 2007 9:09 am
Way down, will quite adsense soon
lucas131
November 25th, 2007 9:36 am
Yes thats right but maybe in this case less clicks better per click money?
Imran Hashmi
November 29th, 2007 10:13 am
Yes CTR has gone down but not too much. I provide Free mobile downloads and produce over 100K adsense impressions daily on different sites.
I noticed almost 8 to 10% decrease in clicks I was getting. I think it is good decision to keep the advertisers comming back with confidence.
Ed
December 4th, 2007 3:39 am
It’s interesting how people are reporting numbers from 20%+ down to like 1%. I guess it depends on what site you have, I’m just trying to figure out what kind of adsense numbers i should shoot for on my site.
Muhd Sufyan
May 4th, 2008 11:28 pm
I guess it depends on your first impression of your page or how you put your ads. I decorate my ads with background images and my CTR increases to 10%. May be you would to like to know how place the ads with background images. Here’s the link http://djyano.blogspot.com/2008/04/increase-adsense-ctr-with-background.html
Regards,
The-Online-Quest
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