Do ads above regular serp results get most of the traffic for that keyword?

The highest link on the page gets the most traffic. So yes, paid ads get more than the number one organic listing.

Thanks for your input, personally before I got into IM I never looked at the ads at the top, I always wanted to go to regular serp listing, but hey that's just me.

I don't think there's been any data published about this. I don't expect the search engines to publish such things just to protect their interests.

Everyone will have an opinion. Many claim they never click the ads. Many others don't care as long as the link seems to offer what they are looking for. It was said years ago that most people don't realize the ads are ads.

I my mind, if there are three ads above the SERPs, even if you are first in the SERPs, you are competing against the top three ads. In effect, you are in fourth position. People are more likely to click the first listing - sponsored or natural - that appeals to them and seem to be what they are searching for.

The advantage of the ads is that the advertiser has a lot more control over how the ad appears as opposed to their natural link. They can make it more attractive. This can make people click more often to the top ads.

Don't expect 40 to 50 percent of people to click your link, even if there was not ads and you were indeed at the very top. That's just not true but this myth persists. If your natural link is good, you may get there but more likely would be 20-25%. If you are on top of SERPs and three ads above you, you may get 5-10% as an estimate. Everybody's mileage will vary.

In PPC, there is a clear progression of click rate from top to bottom. Same for SEO. On average. Not all links, paid or not, are the same and mileages vary. But you do want to be on top 95% of the time.

If that were true, people would be regularly getting 30%+ clickthru rates on their ads if they were the first ad in those top 3. I've never seen that on a PPC campaign, even with ads in the top 3. Have you?

Assuming the keyword data is correct, I have 40-65% CTR on different sites ranked #1 with 3 ads above them. Now if the keyword data is way off, that changes everything.

I suppose in some SERPs the data could be different. I would expect for brand name products, if the company that owns the product is the first ad showing, they are probably going to get a pretty good CTR and take some of the organic traffic.

Yes the Adwords ads do get most of the clicks. I have seen a couple of case studies around that used eye tracking hardware but I can't seem to dig them out.

As with any page whether thats a google results page or an affiliate page, the higher up the page the link the more clicks it will get (assuming all other things are equal)