This study, which measures the CTR of different social network users, was conducted using a referrer based methodology.

To summarize, the CTR in question is calculated as (# of clicks generated from impression set) / (# of impressions received on a publisher webpage from a link posted on Google+/Facebook/Twitter). Hope this helps.

Original Article: Chitika Insights has a new report indicating that Facebook users click on ads more than twice as often as Google+ users or Twitter users.

“Given the announcements and roll out of new social media advertising programs on platforms including; Google+, Facebook and Twitter, we wanted to investigate where advertisers will have the highest potential to engage with users based on CTR (Click Through Rate),” a representative for Chitika tells WebProNews. “To quantify this study, we analyzed a sample of data from the extensive Chitika ad network, covering hundreds of millions of impressions, to compile a data set which yielded the CTR (Click Through Rate, or likelihood of a user clicking on an ad) of the average user on the three social networks.”

The firm isolated the referrer domain for Google+, Twitter and Facebook, to compile a data set which yielded clickthrough rate of the average user on each social network.

Google+ and Twitter users click on ads with about the same frequency, according to Chitika’s findings.

Facebook measured a .24% CTR, while Google+ and Twitter users ranked at .1 and .09% respectively.

“As always, a cost-benefit analysis is key to identifying which platform (if any) is worthwhile for your product or service,” Chitika says. “One of the biggest factors in deciding which form of social network advertising is the best choice is highly dependent on the type of campaign being run. For instance, in marketing a time sensitive campaign, utilizing an analytical approach with Twitter’s promoted trends could be more effective than pursuing standard Facebook ads. Moreover, it is possible as a marketer to optimize for all segments of traffic, and when making the final decision on an ad campaign, it is essential to keep your target market in mind.”

Of course, simply using Google+ to promote your products or services, may have new benefits to search visibility.

Anyway, "The Trouble with Twitter" takes an in-depth look at the money woes at Twitter, in particular its lack of business model. Now, when I say "in-depth," I mean it. In fact, you can safely skip the entire first page–unless you enjoy a little fluff with your morning coffee.

The second page gets to the meat, and has a pretty good analysis of the different types of monetization models Twitter could consider. I’ll summarize the suggested business models:

• Twitter could ask users to pay
• Twitter could get messages to pay
• Twitter could extract money from user data
• Twitter could sell ads

From what I can tell, selling ads is the best lifeline that could be thrown to Twitter at this point. Certainly, it’s likely the option that Twitter users would be least resistant to. Unfortunately, number crunching reveals that Twitter might not be able to make enough money from ads alone:

Advertisers would find Twitter ads generate $28.2 million in profits. So the maximum they logically would spend on such ads is $28.2 million.

Thus Twitter has a real value of $12.26 per user. Compare that with Facebook, which has a perceived value of $300 a user—or at least it did last year, when Microsoft purchased its 1.6% stake for $240 million and the site had 50 million users.

And, that’s assuming some pretty generous CTR and conversion rates.

I’m a huge fan of Twitter–you can catch me discussing Twitter at SES San Jose this week–so I’m hoping it can figure this out before it runs out of money.

So, this is where you come in. What suggestions do you have for revenue model for Twitter? Leave a comment below and we’ll make sure we pass them on to the Twitter team.

Comments

We’ll know more about that when Google releases its earnings report on Thursday.

Efficient Frontier conducted its study by tracking campaigns of clients between Q4 2006 and Q4 2007, covering 17 billion ad impressions and 270 million clicks on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The clients were advertisers in the Finance, Travel and Automotive sectors.

Google Leads In Search Spend and CPC Inflation

Google’s share of the search spend increased by 8.6% last year, growing from 70.5% to 76.6%. ROI on Google increased by 7.5%.

That kind of dominance is a blessing and a curse for advertisers as Google’s search share presents a cornered market and larger audiences, but Efficient Frontier also says Google’s universal search and expanded broad match updates didn’t do much to affect campaign performance.

Thanks to increased competition and a change to the AdWords algorithm in August, top positions have become costlier in terms of CPC bid prices. In fact, Google led the other two search engines in CPC inflation last year as CPC prices spiked 22%, half of which occurred in Q4 following the AdWords algorithm update. 

The AdWords algorithm update did not appear to have an effect on click-through-rates, which remained steady in 2007 until a 12.5% increase in CTR in Q4 2007. Google penalizing sites with poor landing pages is thought to be a direct factor in the increased CTRs.

Despite the increased cost on Google, Efficient Frontier still names Google as the engine of choice because of the sheer volume of referrals it generates.

Yahoo ROI Up, Search Assist Kills CTR

It sounds like mixed results for Yahoo. While advertisers enjoyed a 39.4% increase in ROI since Panama was completed in February 2007, the overall ad spend on Yahoo declined by nearly 4%, leaving the company with just 17.9% of the search spend.

The ROI wasn’t enough to make up for the declining volume of searches on Yahoo, which led to lesser investing in Yahoo search advertising. In addition, Yahoo Search Assist, which allows users to refine searches, possibly led to a 34% drop in CTR last year.

MSN Is King of the Molehill

The good news for MSN is that it leads the other engines in ROI and CTRs. The bad news is, hardly anybody using it, which means there’s less competition affecting ROI and CTR. MSN pulled in 5% of search engine ad spending last year.

But things are looking up. Though CTRs were 50% higher on MSN than Google last year, that statistic actually declined 16.5% between Q4 2006 and Q4 2007. Efficient Frontier suggests increased competition as a reason for declining CTRs on MSN.

Google helped provide one form of CPM contraction when they changed what part of an AdSense ad block is clickable. Markus Friend said that knocked his CTR down by about 60%.

Markus Friend also highlighted that Google controls about 40% of the (heavily consolidated) ad market:

90% of Advertising revenues are made by the top 50 sites and the top 10 sites take 70% of that, with google taking 40% of all Online US advertising.

This CPM compression is going to cause many late movers to crank out content with more ads on it, further lowering their CPM and direct readership until they are financially insolvent. But then again, the web could use another bust cycle to clean up the meaning of the word "content". Shoddy intrusive ad networks like NetAudioAds should not be featured as the next big thing in the WSJ.

In a recent interview, Nick Carr said he expects the ad consolidation trend to continue

It’s the aggregators that are the big winners, at least in economic terms, not the legions of individual contributors.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve seen that the automation provided by computer systems has tended to concentrate wealth in the hands of a small slice of the population. I expect that trend will only accelerate in the years ahead. If you’re one of the digital elite, you’ve got it made. If not, the prospects are less bright.

What is the solution for publishers? How do prevent yourself from being absorbed by the commons? Develop meaningful relationships, be remarkable, and sell direct. Hugh on owning an idea:

Social Markers are a prime form of social shorthand, that people use to STAKE OUT the ecosystem they’re occupying. So why do I find this such a useful term for marketers? Because obviously, if your product is a Social Marker in your industry ecosystem [the way the iPhone is in the mobile world, or Starbucks is in the coffee world, or Amazon is the book world, or Google is in the search world, or Whole Foods is in the supermarket world, or Virgin is in the airline world, or English Cut in the bespoke world etc etc] you will have an AMAZING competitive advantage to call your own.

And if the product your company makes is not a Social Marker, I guess the first question would be, "Why the hell not?" Quit your job and start over.

One of the easiest ways to claim an idea is to turn its launch into an event, and differentiate it from everything else you are doing. Buy the matching domain name if you can.

Bonus cool link: Bill Slawski mentioned a Yahoo! patent about moving away from the random surfer model to a user sensitive PageRank. Now if they could only apply some good ideas in the SERPs. And no, this does not count.

Comments

Even if you had no intent to monetize a post, it just became easier to monetize accidental rankings. If you use analytics to track your stats and notice that you start ranking for some good keywords you can use Triggit to embed links to merchant products directly in the text of your blog post.

Shoemoney created this quick video to show how Triggit works

Unlike the automated ad solutions like intellitxt or AdSense, these Triggit ads

• look like other regular links on the page (so they should get a high CTR)
• can easily be applied on a page by page level (so you do not have to clutter up every page to monetize the few pages that can make a lot of money)
• link to products recommended by the editor (to preserve editorial integrity)
• can link to merchants that pay via affiliate payout or CPC (offering multiple monetization models)
• allow you to keep your pages clean (and easy to link at) until they rank, then have you add monetization after you have a leading market position for related keywords

Triggit ads are easy to set up and should require little maintenance on the end user’s side, but they are still a small start up, so if you start doing well with them make sure you remember which pages do well so you can keep monetizing the pages if the Triggit partnership stops working, and so you can track which pages you should try to monetize more aggressively and/or build links to.

As blended semi-editorial in content ad networks like these evolve, the distinction between optimization and spam blurs. And since Google has a similar product, it is going to be hard to view this in a negative light without looking hypocritical in the process. From Google’s pay per action page:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: "Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today." (Mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

 Comments

Tracking Google’s rapid-fire releases and changes in recent weeks has been an exercise in itself. Pay Per Action ads, AdSense unit changes, and now an update to One Box.

It’s been a fixture on Google’s search results for some time, a blue box containing the top AdWords advertisements for a given query. Some people have spotted a different look for it from time to time, and now many more should start seeing the yellow-toned background on Google.com.

The official word comes from Daniel Dulitz on the Inside AdWordsblog about the color change, as well as a tweak to what’s clickable inside the One Box:

First, we thought it was time for a new look: after months of testing, we decided to switch the background color of the top ads from blue to yellow. Second, we’ve modified what counts as a click in this box to be consistent with what counts as a click for the ads on the right hand side. Instead of clicking anywhere in the box, users now need to click on the link in the top line of an ad in order to be taken to an advertiser’s site. Together, these changes help decrease the likelihood that a user will unintentionally click on an ad, while making our highest quality ads more visible.

Andrew Goodman suggested at his Traffick blog that perhaps banner blindness had set in for Google visitors:

Were CTR’s declining? We know that rotating ad design in banner campaigns sometimes props up CTR’s. Personally, I haven’t seen much evidence of declining CTR up there at the top, but you never know.

Considering Google’s continued financial success with online advertising, its bread and butter, those click-throughs probably perform just fine. But there’s always room for improvement.

This seems to work best with link ad units, but I’m willing to bet it’d work nicely with full-size ads as well. Lets see some experimentation! I want confidential email with click-through rates

——————————————————————————–

Other stuff I’ve been meaning to get to:

Here’s another good ad placement.

Clear Channel has a deal to use Google AdSense and AdWords.

AdSense CTR’s now go to two decimal places. Useful for those that track this stuff religiously, and those that have to.

Google is seeking a patent for ad-subsidized wifi web access. Not exactly an original idea.

Take a look at Google’s GeoAds beta, for advertising in Google Local with graphics in the ads.

AdWords advertisers can now bid on which position they want.

Verizon SuperPages is selling Google AdWords.

Add to | Digg | Yahoo! My Web

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Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.

Visit the InsideGoogle blog.

If somehow, you manage to triple your CTR just by tweaking the Google AdSense code, that equals three times boost in your traffic. Here are a few tips for increasing your CTR.

What Google AdSense Engineers say:

- An email conversation with a Google Engineer:

“Due to the dynamic nature of Google AdSense, fluctuations in your revenue will occur. Your earnings will depend on a number of factors, including the types of ads being served to your pages, the cost per click or cost per impression of these ads, and your users’ click through selections. Regarding ad placement – the best ad format varies from page to page. We’ve observed that, in general, wider ads perform better because of their reader-friendly format. We strongly recommend putting your users first when deciding on ad placement. Think about their behavior on different pages, and what will be most useful and visible to them. You’ll find that the most optimal ad position isn’t always what you expect on certain pages.”

- Google Optimization Guide:

For example, on pages where users are typically focused on reading an article, ads placed directly below the end of the article tends to perform better. It’s almost as if users finish reading and asking themselves, “What can I do next?” Precisely targeted ads are just like answering their questions.

https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html

What Webmasters have concluded

Webmasters have very diverse views on how to increase CTR. It largely depends upon the keywords you are targeting, looks of your website, the quality of its content, placement of AdSense ads, page optimization and various other factors. Generally, AdSense blocks wrapped between the quality content works the best. For the websites having poor quality content, placing the Ads before the start of the content works best.

If you develop a poor quality content website, it will likely give you high CTR and clicks, but you will be getting low priced ads and also nobody will like to add your url to their favorites. But if you have quality content, that keeps the visitors glued, you may get low CTR, but you will be getting high priced ads and regular visitors, too.

Proper positioning of ads on your website has direct impact on your CTR. Change the location of the ads and watch changes in your CTR regularly. Try to locate the area of the page where the focus of the visitor can be. Generally, AdSense ads near the quality content or other crucial areas like navigation bar tend to perform better. But it really depends upon the keywords you are targeting, and the traffic you have. As the Google engineers say, more user friendly ads, more widespread tend to do better than towers and others.

The Traffic

AdSense comes after traffic. No traffic, no AdSense. Take a great care of your traffic. Your visitors expect some valuable information from you. Make sure you are providing quality content to them. This will increase your visitors’ return back ratio. And only those visitors will return who are more targeted to the content you are providing. More targeted users mean more CTR. 85 percent of my visitors add my website urls in their Favorites, and most of them do return.

Install a Website stats monitoring software and regularly look at your web logs, and get a handle on where your traffic is coming from. Try to establish a pattern or relation between your AdSense stats and your traffic stats, so that if there are any marked deviations you can make a judgment on why there has been an increase/decrease and what (if anything) you can do about it.
This will give you new ideas to develop traffic.

Experiments

Experiment and experiment a lot, till you are satisfied with the tweaks you have done to achieve highest CTR. Track your page performance by making channels of ads in your AdSense Control Panel and experiment till you are satisfied with your CTR. Though, each such experiment will make you loose money for a day or two, as Google may take time to adjust with new changes, but it will be beneficial in long run.

KeywordCountry (http://www.keywordcountry.com) helps AdSense webmasters in increasing their AdSense revenue. KeywordCountry is a library of 2.83 million Top paying keywords containing thousands of niche keywords. For more tips and tricks on AdSense, subscribe to KeywordCountry.com.

1. Target your ads to the right Audience. You do this by selecting keywords and phrases which are relevant to your product or service. Avoid keywords that are too general because although they generate a large number of impressions, they often generate very few clicks. To improve your CTR, use more descriptive phrases so that your ads will only appear to prospective customers searching for what you have to offer.

2. Use the correct keyword matching option(s). Google offers four different methods of targeting your ads by keywords: Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Negative keyword. By applying the most focused matching options to your keywords, you can reach more targeted prospects, improve your CTR, reduce your cost-per-click and increase your return on investment.

3. Target your ads by location and language. When creating your adwords campaign target your ads by location so that you maximise your sales and improve your CTR. Target the right audience by selecting the language and countries that you want to reach.

4. Use your main keywords in the Title or Body Text of your ad. By using your keywords in the title or ad body text of your ad, it will stand out from your competitors and grab the eye of your prospective customers.

5. Create different Ad Groups for different search phrases/keywords. This will allow you to refine your ads and test them for relevance and therefore maximise your clickthrough rates. For example, if your service offers loans, you can create different ad groups for home equity loans (and all other phrases that incorporate this phrase), consolidation loans, student loans and so on.

6. Calculate what you can afford to pay for each clickthrough. You will find that more focused keywords and search phrases have a higher conversion ratio than other more general keywords. It’s a good strategy to pay more for clicks from keywords or phrases with a high conversion ratio than from the more general keyword groups.

7. Use highly targeted Keywords and search phrases. Be specific when selecting keywords and search phrases for your campaign. General keywords will be more expensive and will result in lower clickthrough rates. If you’re bidding on general keywords that are relevant to your site consider using the Exact match and the Phrase match keyword matching options in order to increase your CTR.

8. Test and monitor your ads to get the best clickthrough rates. Refine and fine-tune your ad to maximise click throughs. With Google you can do this in real time. You can do this by creating different ads for each ad group and then checking which ads have the best clickthrough rates.

9. Give Google users a compelling reason to click on your ad link. The easiest way to do this is to provide something of value for free. You can also achieve this if you tailor each keyword to your offer and use relevant terms/ words in both the title and the ad body. Use a different ad for each keyword group or search term. This increases relevance and the likelihood that Google users will click on it.

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Copyright. Ben Chapi owns Venister Home business and Affiliate
Program Classifieds at http://www.venister.org/. He is also
webmaster for http://www.best-debt-consolidation-loan.co.uk
and http://www.home-equity-loan.org.uk/