What % Skip Ads

Over the years in these forums, there has been many who say they don't click the ads because they don't "trust" them. To me, that's just ridiculous. Why trust an organic listing when it may be trying to sell you exactly the same thing as the ad? Sometimes, it can be the same site.

Still, I'm sure there's a certain percentage who won't under any circumstance, since they have come out and said it. What that percentage is, I don't know. I recall something semi-official about this and that it was quite high (10-20% ?). But the method used may be flawed and I'm sure it was.

Your question is flawed too. Your true CTR is whatever it is, not that rate minus the percentage that never click an ad. They were all exposed to your ad, some simply decided to ignore them. I truly believe that you can swing around even those people to click with very good ads. After all, if you increase your CTR a reasonable amount (say by 20% from 5% to 6%), what you suggest if that if 10% of searchers claim they never click on ads, that suddenly a lesser percentage of them did click on your better ad. I don't think you can claim that the non-clickers percentage is unchanging.

When there's a suggestion about something like this, I always ask what the goal of it is, does it make sense, and will the answer provide value that will help further improve the campaign. I don't see the value of it even if you had an accurate and unchanging number across all verticals.

It depends on industry to industry.

yeah

I personally click an adrelated to IM when its either

1) very intriguing
2) very enticing offers
3) professional and quality ads

Thanks for your reply LucidWebMarketing.

I am just trying to get a more accurate or truer picture of how my ads are performing. It seems to me that people who automatically skip the ads at the top of a search result page skew the actual ctr performance. If there are 100 impressions and 8 people click, then it looks like a ctr of 8%. However, if 20 of the searchers automatically skip the ads at the top, then the real number of potential clickers is 80 and the ctr is 10%. If 40 of the searchers automatically skip the ads at the top of the page, then real number of potential clickers is 60 and the ctr jumps to 13%.

It seems to me that the 13% would be a more accurate indication of how an ad is performing than the 8% would be.

Thanks!

But that's just it. They don't skew your results. It is an accurate picture of your CTR. You can't just remove a certain percentage of the searches just because they refuse to click ads.

You are also in your example comparing one ad to nothing. You have to compare it to another ad. If you have another ad that gets a 10% CTR, you are going to say it should be 12.5% (using your same percentage of non-clickers) because some don't click on ads? The exercise is pointless. All you are doing is adjusting every number the same way. The second ad is still better, no matter what math you apply on both of them.

Hi AlphaWarrior,

Listen to Lucid, he is correct.

There is no point trying to figure out which percentage "skipped" your ad impression. It isn't measurable, and even if it was measurable it doesn't matter, and it isn't going to be the same from one day to the next.

For all practical purposes you can classify everyone that didn't click your ad as someone that "skipped" your ad. Sure, each person may have had a different reason, but it does no good to speculate on data that cannot be measured, nor acted upon. The only thing that really matters is how many people clicked your ads and what you can do to improve that ratio.

My advice is to focus on what you can measure and improve, don't waste energy on the things you cannot influence or control.

HTH,

Don Burk