Conclusions from tracking blog ads
1. New ads work You will always get a higher CTR on new ads,
both text and graphical (but not Adsense). Think of it like a
honeymoon for ads. New ads are good for probably 2 to 3 days in
terms of decent CTR, then they drop off to lower levels. Ive
tracked the ads from the BlogAds Advertising service for a
period as well. My advice if you're advertising using BlogAds
over a period of time: rotate your ad graphics maybe once a week.
2. Regular readers tend to be ad blind Regular readers will
click on ad spots but the CTR is much lower than for new
readers, particularly on Adsense ads. Ive had lots of different
traffic in the last four weeks on a variety of different
subjects and its the posts bringing in completely new traffic
that have the high CTR's, and I'm talking at times four to five
times higher rates on the same ad spot as per a post that would
attract a regular reader
3. Old posts = revenue It really, really surprised me how many
days I'd look at the stats and see clickthrus from Adsense ads
that are so old I don't even remember writing them! And
sometimes the CTR is higher on these pages as well. Perhaps the
Adsense ad was more relevant that the 2 year old content? who
knows!
4. Niche topics deliver better ad results Statistically its
niche topics that do best in terms of CTR, perhaps in part
because they bring in new traffic. Topics that relate to
specific occupations, geographic areas or types of people seem
to work better than general topics relevant to your broader
readership collectively.
5. Top banners aren't very good I've been playing with the my
top banner space, and it does'nt work overly well, but it can
with rotation. If you're going to do a banner see if you can
rotate it with a number of ads, alternatively if you've signed
the one advertiser see if they've got a variety of ads for you
to rotate, your CTR rates will be better if you do.
6. Text Links work Some people might think that text links are
all about Google juice, and although they might be partially
right, they'd also be partially wrong, because I was amazed to
see some text links in the nav bars doing reasonable CTR rates.
Sure, not amazingly high, but when people attack O'Reilly and
others on the basis of relevance I'd argue that if one person
clicks on it, it must be relevant to them. In the case on my
tracking, it was a lot more than one person.