I’ve seen many people to ask question in online forums “How to increase the clickthrough rate on the ads they display on their web sites?”. Most of them just joined Google Adwords or Yahoo Publisher and expected to start making at least $50 daily. The truth however is that the ads may not substitute quality content. People browse the web not to click on website’s ads but to find something helpful. So it is better to give them something.

As many others I also want visitors of my web hosting blog to click on the Yahoo ads but when I don’t have new and fresh content the number of visitors decreases. That didn’t make me to post advertising code on the place where the next article should be posted.

So having a meaningful content is the cornerstone of any successful website. And if you can not add any it is better to hire authors to write news, articles, reviews, and etc, for you at least once a week. Otherwise you can not expect people to come only because you need them to click on your ads. Advertising positions are supplementary to the web content the same way they are on TV. No one sits in front of their TV to watch commercials. And as we all know, most people avoid them.

Once a web site has quality content and brings many people to its pages it comes the question how and where to place ads. I always suggest webmasters to have the same background of the ads as the one where the website’s content appears. This way site visitors feel more comfortable with the ads. It is very important of course to make them to pay some attention on the advertising positions so you should be able to gain some profit.

That’s why it is very important to get the best from your advertiser network. That means to set-up your account for best performance by getting highly targeted ads. Account set-up and targeting are different at Google and Yahoo so anyone have to pay attention on their publisher account.

Let’s also take a look to the ad performance from different point of view – the quality of the website visitors and their behaviour. Producing a quality content is important, but more important is to reach target audience and to bring its members to your pages. So think about those channels that can make more people from the right consumer groups to come to your website.