For the past few weeks I have been launching a bunch of websites adding to my traffic network.  They are a mix of blogs, membership and tube sites, forums, TGP’s, landing pages, among other things. I integrated my Smart Spots ad script, as I talked about the other day, and replaced my OpenX.

I have 80% of my sites running with the new ad rotation script and I notice some changes. While my celebrity sites, blogs, forums and other things are doing really well with their CTR (click through rates) my tube sites were not (To be fair, I have not intalled the Smart Scripts on my tube pay sites. Their CTR is typically much higher) the tube sites were terrible.

I have years of tracking data from my OpenX, and normally the sites all have CTR ratios of less than 1:250, and tube sites typically are more like 1:500 or less. But the traffic tubes were running like 1:1700 in a week’s time of installing the new Smart Spots. So I am thinking, that can’t be right!

I only had a half dozen banners in rotation at that time, so I figured I would add in a few more sponsors, and also  change things up a bit with some simpler banner ads. In two days time that CTR on the tube sites had dropped down to 1:746 and keeps falling. I now have around 18 banners in rotation, but have switched up almost all of the ads. Some banners I made myself because I did not like theirs.

So in 2 days times, with tens of thousands of impressions, a couple of quick simple changes and that CTR was cut in half. It simply goes to show you that simple is sometimes a better solution when doing affiliate ads, and marketing techniques. Also, that you need to always be tweaking, tracking, and changing things up when they do not work.

Do not be afraid to try a new trick or two. Just make sure you have something in place to track those changes. Otherwise you are going about it blind and will struggle much more than you need to.