Pro Tips to Crank Your Banner Ad CTR to the Max!

If your site has a high CTR and you can maintain those levels, then you’ll be able to charge advertisers more money to take up precious space on your site. After all, you’re giving advertisers prime positioning on your site that has a CTR of the gods. If you’re using an ad network, such as AdSense or Bitmedia, these networks will use yours CTR information to maintain standards. If your CTR is high, then you’ll have nothing to worry about.

But, how can you improve your CTR so that you can earn more money and keep your accounts with ad networks in good standing? Fortunately for you, we’re here to share some industry secrets so that you can crank your CTR to the max!

Let’s go!

What is a Good CTR?

Depending on the type of site or app that you’ve got, the level for a “good” CTR will vary. First up, you want to make sure that you’re looking at your CTR over a decent length of time, such as 6 months, so that you can prove that the average doesn’t falter and that you’re not a one week wonder. So, if you take all those factors into account, anywhere between 2% and 25% is considered “good”. Many consider around 6% to be the sweet spot, however.

What’s the Difference Between Impressions and CTR?

A lot of new publishers will often get impressions and CTR mixed up, and that’s totally normal. Simply put, impressions is the number of eyeballs that visit your page, or the ad space on your site. This is just the amount of people that have seen a piece of content or an ad, not taking any actions into account. CTR, on the other hand, only counts the number of people that take action and click on an ad or link. CTR counts the action, and for this reason tends to pay at a better rate than 1,000 impressions.

How Can Publishers Increase Ad CTR in 2022?

That’s enough waffle, time to dive into the facts and teach you how you can increase your CTR for 2022 so that you can become a top earning publisher and maximize your income!

• #1 – Quality Content

The most important change you can make to your website is to have quality content. That means delivering content to your audience that’s refined and filled with information that they want to digest. This means that you’re going to need to build a content strategy and avoid AI content generators as this is quite thin content that offers little value to your reader, unless you spend months fine tuning it for each piece.

The idea behind this is that if you’re offering real value to your audience, they’re more likely to come back and see you as an authoritative source. This then translates into a higher CTR as you’ve built trust with your audience, meaning that they trust the ads they see on your site and will more likely click through.

•  #2 – Density of Ads

You don’t want to stuff your site full of ads, as if you do, your site will quickly start to look like the million-dollar homepage. That in turn will make your readers run away and crash your CTR. Generally speaking, the fewer ads you have on your page, the higher your CTR. According to the Coalition for BetterAds.org, the total height of ads on your page should be no more than 30% of the total height of your page at the absolute extreme. This is the point where CTR falls through the floor. Let’s say your page is 1,000px tall, as long as ads don’t fill more than 300px, you’re golden.

• #3 – Use a Display Ad Network

Having a couple of neat ads on your site will help improve your CTR, but using a display ad network to serve ads will help you boost it significantly. Why? This is because ad networks will quickly browse through the users’ cookies and see what sort of things they get upto and then compare this to the database of ads in the network. It’ll then serve up ads that are relevant to that particular user, meaning they only see ads that are relevant to them. A more relevant ad means more chance that the user will click on it, increasing your CTR. It helps that the better ad networks also vet the ads that are running on their network, meaning that only high-quality ads will ever be served on your site.

• #4 – Use Responsive Ads

Responsive ads fit nicely into any space that you have designated as ad space on your site. Whether the user is on mobile, desktop, or tablet, the ad space will change and so too will the ads. This means that ads will fit perfectly and fit seamlessly with your content. Ad networks, such as Bitmedia, allow you to select various native ad banner sizes, giving your viewers the best responsive ads without being too in their face.

• #5 – Optimize Website Structure for Ads

Lots of publishers opt to stick ads in the header, sidebar, and in the middle of content. But this approach isn’t a one size fits all solution. You need to see where your readers respond best to ads and set those as your ad locations. By using tools such as HotJar, you can see where your users are looking and dive4rting their attention. You can then adjust the layout of your website to throw ads into the perfect location, therefore optimizing your layout for the best CTR possible.

• #6 – Use SEO Keywords

SEO and SERPS are still the number one way to drive visitors, increase impressions, and maximize your CTR. You should have a two-pronged SEO approach if you’re going to smash this. Start by using relevant long-tail keywords that aren’t super popular in your niche, but are popular enough to still have a nice bit of traffic. Pair this up with dedicated landing pages and insightful content, and you’ll bag the super specific niche traffic and turn that into a solid CTR.

Next up, increase the depth of your SEO keyword pool. Search trends are constantly changing, so make sure you’re hitting all of the most relevant and up to date search terms for your industry or niche. This will allow you to remain at the top of the SERPS and scoop up more traffic than your competitors. If you’ve followed all the other steps to this point, this will result in a higher CTR.

• #7 – Test Multiple Ad Setups

Web visitors are all unique, and only a small handful will have the exact same preferences. So, what we suggest you do is mix it up a bit. Run several landing pages with mostly the same content, layout, and colors. Then, change up the ad placement and setup on each one, making it slightly different each time. You’ll then be able to see which setup works best for your audience and you can make this the default layout for your ads going forwards. Remember to keep testing so that your data is constantly fresh, and your sites are always fully optimized!

• #8 – Improve Web Design and Social Presence

Your website is only as strong as your audience, and if your audience hates your design, then they’re not going to hang around on your site. Spend time to craft a beautiful design that stands out, is clear, and easy to use. Then, hire a top team of developers to put that gorgeous design into action. Remember to throw in the data from your ad setup testing to ensure ads are located in the most profitable spots, and you’ll be seeing your CTR climb like a 747 into the skies.

Combine your new style with a fresh lick of love on your social media profiles, as well as sharing your latest content on social, and you’ll quickly reap the rewards. Remember, engaging with your audience on social can do wonders for your reputation if you do it properly!

• #9 – Pay More Attention to Mobile Users

More than 55% of all web traffic comes from a mobile device, so you’d be silly to leave this massive portion out in the cold. When you’re designing your content, site and ad placements, make sure that you take mobile users into account, creating beautiful templates and layouts for these users. Make booking or enquiring about your products or services as easy as possible, saving mobile users precious time and generating you a better CTR!

Keep Optimizing for CTR!

That about wraps it up for this guide on how to boost your CTR in 2022. If you follow all of these steps, you should see your CTR increase beyond your wildest dreams, resulting in more revenue. If you are pairing up with an ad network to help serve the best display ads, make sure you set up any restrictions that your website might have. After all, you don’t want to upset your readers!