Well here are my two cents - I suggest to give Adsense another try. It should not take too much time to get Adsense back into the pages anyway, and what have you got to lose? But be quick as long as the link on the news site is "hot". If it does not work out OK, you can still pull Adsense from these pages.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Your experiment is more important as a long term exercise.

Don't milk the coverage and additional traffic for ad revenue - milk it for the publicity and kudos that it brings. You want to be making the most of the publicity, not the potential ad revenue.

If you're in it for the long term with your site, you need to sometimes think outside the money box.

TJ

Thanks people for your advice. I'm going to have to give it some thought as to what I do. It's really frustrating that there is no way of knowing how much you could have earned if you have ads turned off.

In my personal experience, huge traffic surges on account of news (publicity) may not always translate into a huge click rate. I got decent publicity for my site in a national newspaper and although curiosity value did improve traffic for a week or so, the earnings did not go up proportionatley. The increase was only 10- 20 % for a week or so. However I do feel, the long term effects of this publicity will be good as I milk the publicity to increase brand value of my site and increase conversions.

Don't make the mistake of believing that a low CTR means that ads on the page aren't converting. A page with a low CTR may in fact be among your best coverting pages.

Run that by me again, hyperkik?

Here's the official word on smart-pricing [adsense.blogspot.com].

of course google is going to tell you to keep their ads on as many of your pages as possible.

but low ctr indicates poor targeting, so it follows that the conversion rate for the advertiser could be lower as well.

danimal

Yes, low CTR could be poor targeting and therefore low conversions, but it could also be due to high filtering and channelling. I.e. Only really interested, well informed genuine customers click on the Ad. This would give a low CTR but a very high conversion.

I think you also have to rely on your knowledge of your site. I have a couple of pages on my site that get a high number of returning visitors, who look for news and then leave. I've tried AdSense on those pages and get only the occasional click, and on those pages I tend to feel that clicks aren't converting--they are just random exit clic ks, so I don't put AdSense there. Other low CTR pages, IF they get well targeted ads and targeted traffic, I keep the ads.

Keep in mind too, those of you who believe that low CTR might mean good or decent conversions, that many advertisers don't track conversions. So what does smart pricing rely on in that case? I have had some experience that it IS CTR, at least in some cases. These were instances where I removed AdSense from very low CTR page, and saw not only my average click value but my total earnings go up....

Different sites will work differently, of course. You have to find that works best for you.

I don't think its a question of low CTR leading to high conversion - but the relationship could be the other way round.

Whatever is done to achieve a high conversion must reduce CTR - those "clicks" that would not have converted are there - they are effectively filtered out by the content.

Thanks for your thoughts once again.

There are just so many variables in Adsense that it makes it difficult to compare anything! For the last few days CTR and ECPM have been rising since I have turned off ads on the associated pages. However yesterday sees earnings down. Was this a slow day or is having these images there no more reducing earnings? How much could I have made on this day with the ads there? Should I put them back? It's annoying that you don't know if the decisions you are making are the right ones.

Adsense = fortune telling. Now where's my crystal ball?!

>>>it could also be due to high filtering and channelling. I.e. Only really interested, well informed genuine customers click on the Ad. This would give a low CTR but a very high conversion.<<<

channels don't affect what ads appear on the site... but if you filtered all the junk ads out, most of your ads should be on target, which would raise the ctr, and therefore the conversion rate.

don't base your changes on daily or even weekly stats... run it for a month at least.

danimal
sorry, you've misunderstood what I meant by "channelling".

I didn't mean channels - I meant steering visitor to particular pages or part of a page to progress them towards a sale.

A simple example would be:
Click here for more information, Or Click Here for some relevant adverts.

This would effectively filter your visitors - those fer who choose the Adverts link would then yield a very high click through rate.
P

i think that is called a funnel? you are sort of pre-qualifying your traffic.

i don't think that it should lower your ctr, if anything, wouldn't it raise your ctr? as opposed to more generic, untargeted traffic that doesn't see any ads that they are interested in.

You're quite right funnel rather than channelling is the better term.

It is my point exactly that if you are funnelling your visitors somehow before they get to the page showing an Ad, you will see an increased CTR and a reduced number of Ad impressions - not because G is doing anything, but because of the funnelling.

but low ctr indicates poor targeting, so it follows that the conversion rate for the advertiser could be lower as well.

Not necessarily. As with most things, it depends.

In an image gallery (which the original poster was discussing), users will tend to view multiple pages during a visit, so the CTR will be lower than it would be for a single-page article no matter what the user's mindset is. And while one could argue that the person viewing an image gallery may be more interested in looking at pictures than in researching a purchase, the few users who do click on ads may be highly motivated (assuming that the ads aren't disguised as navigational elements that get clicked on for the wrong reasons).

FWIW, I've tried my own image galleries both ways (with and without AdSense ads), and I haven't noticed any differences in eCPM. One thing that the OP can be sure of is that removing the AdSense ads will eliminate AdSense revenues from those pages--including revenues from site-targeted CPM ads, which earn money every time they're viewed, not just when ads are clicked.

>>>In an image gallery (which the original poster was discussing)<<<

the o.p. never said anything about an image gallery... his exact words were "mainly image orientated pages", which could encompass a lot of things.

since google does not base your paycheck on your ecpm rate, it's not very relevant... epc(earnings per click) is what matters.

imho, the o.p. needs to add channels and tweak the number of ad blocks on various pages, to see if any configuration brings in a decent ctr... then default all the "image oriented pages" to the most successful design, and monitor the epc for an extended period of time, maybe at least 6-8 weeks?

if the epc does not improve, remove adsense entirely from the low ctr pages, and monitor the epc for another extended period of time.

low ctr indicates poor targeting, so it follows that the conversion rate for the advertiser could be lower as well.

Not necessarily. I've got some product-based niche affiliate sites that also run adsense, and my two best earning sites (via my merchants' sales) have Adsense ads precisely on target with the lowest CTR of all - and excellent CTR and conversion rates for the merchants (the affiliate links). Those pages shouldn't run Adsense because the commission potential is higher for even one or two sales.

I think you also have to rely on your knowledge of your site. I have a couple of pages on my site that get a high number of returning visitors, who look for news and then leave. I've tried AdSense on those pages and get only the occasional click, and on those pages I tend to feel that clicks aren't converting--they are just random exit clic ks, so I don't put AdSense there. Other low CTR pages, IF they get well targeted ads and targeted traffic, I keep the ads.

I'd agree with this. I have a couple of low traffic pages that don't get that many clicks, but when they do it's often high value ones. You have to use the knowledge of your site and it's visitors (and a bit of experimenting with adsense) to work this one out for yourself.

I'd also totally agree that as most advertisers don't use conversion tracking, smart pricing has to be based on some form of guesswork. If CTR plays a part in it we don't know, but I'd suggest (based on my experience) that it may well be one of the factors considered.

Whitenoise wrote:

Adsense = fortune telling. Now where's my crystal ball?!

eCPM [webmasterworld.com], EPC [webmasterworld.com], etc.

AdSense is unique because it's designed to maximize eCPM for our publishers, taking into account both the advertiser's cost-per-click (CPC) bid and the likelihood that the ad will be clicked.

Inside AdSense, 2006-09-25 [adsense.blogspot.com]

I've been busy these last couple of days (sadly doing the 9-5...) so haven't had a chance to reply to all your helpful comments.

I think it's all relative when it comes to earnings. I have tried a number of tests and removing ads from the pages in question each time increase ecpm and ctr but always seem to lower earnings. I think EFV is right in what he says. At the end of the day all that really matters is the daily earnings. If the ads are removed, yes it a higher epcm and ctr but if earnings are down - why do this? Most of the time the ads are on target are interesting to visitors. While I have opted out of site-targetted ads, I think the few dollars here and there that come from these pages all add up. It would be nice to know if I had ads I would have earned x but without them I would have earned y, but its impossible to know this, so you just have to go with your instinct. I could add YPN, but sadly Yahoo belives that the US is the whole world and consequently considers my country 'insignificant', so I don't have the luxury of using these ads as well.

So at the end of the day the ads are back in place. I'll try to keep an eye on how things go. Thanks to everyone for their thoughts.