Low CTR and affiliate ads placement

Are you getting low Click Through Rates (CTR) on your affiliate banners?

Well ArticleGOLD is and I suspect that its due to the ad placement. At the moment you can see from the below screenshot that the banners are located at the far right column.

Over the last day and a half and over 10,000 impressions we have less than 10 clicks. I admit it may not be all ad placement as we should consider the following:

1. Targeted ads - Although we have targeted some ads already and so it shouldn’t be as low as it is.
2. Visitors are information seekers - True but before with Google referrals and Amazon, we were getting around 40-50 clicks a day. Amazon was in-text links though.
3. Banners do not attract clicks - Are banners really so bad for click-through? Maybe they are too small located so far to the side.

I have considered them, but we are on a fast-paced journey and decided to move the location of the affiliate banner to under the article (where the previous Google referrals ad was). This actually is less distracting for our users too as some big ads with their flash animated banners got on my nerves whilst reading articles.

We’ll get the results to you in a few days.