A very small case study, posted at DigitalPoint Forums concludes that women are much more likely to click on contextual ads – those ads appearing in the sidebar based on a match to your page’s content and keywords.
The main observation deals with how the website content affects Adsense click-through-rates (CTR). In this particular case, highest CTRs came from a fashion site tailored to women and girls, prompting the study author to conclude that women are just more likely to click on ads than men.
- Woman tailored site has 40% CTR with 200 uniques a day.
- Cell phone site has 1% CTR with 500-600 uniques a day.
- Unknown site has 2% CTR with 1200 unique visitors a day.
As the comment thread shows, not everyone agrees. Our experience shows that highest CTRs come from sites with strong content and a focus on a hot product that everyone wants to buy online.
If I had to predict which site would get higher CTRs – fashion or cell phones – I would predict fashion. How many people buy their cell phone online, without handling it first in person in a store?
