Improving Pay-per-Click Click-Through Rates (continued, part 4)
5. Target Your Web Site
This tip goes back to the oft-repeated suggestion that targeting ads and offers to your visitor's interests will help improve click-throughs. Whether or not you can do this with pay-per-click programs will be highly dependent on the program you join. With most pay-per-click networks you are not given the ability to target ads, let alone even choose which ads you would like to run on your site. However, if you are promoting individual vendor's pay-per-click ads, you do still have specific control of what ad is placed on your site and what offer it is promoting.
The good news is that more help in this area is on the way. A variety of companies now offer software that allows companies to target banner ads on the fly based on what results have been seen in the past. Expect these advancements to continue to trickle down to the more sophisticated pay-per-click networks shortly.
Advertising.com
already has the ability to do this today with their AdWave network,
which tracks not only which ads are receiving the highest click-throughs
on your site, but also which pay the most, and generate you the
most income. Other programs such as ValueClick
give you the ability to select which ads you would like to exclude
from being displayed, as well as indicate a preference towards certain
categories of ads you would like to have displayed. These options
at least give you some control over targeting network ads to your
site's visitors.
Summary
In summary, I highly recommend if you participate in pay-per-click programs or networks that you look into several of the strategies outlined above. Although they will surely take more time to implement than simply copying and pasting HTML into your pages, the improvement in results can be dramatic enough to make it well worth your while.
For in-depth reviews and ratings of pay-per-click programs, check
here.
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