10.2 The Most Important Stat Of All

There’s one figure that’s more important than any of the others. Know whichone I’m talking about?

Revenue! If you aren’t making money, no other stats matter.

If you are making money though, the next stat you want to watch is yourCTR. The higher the percentage of clicks to page impressions you receive,the higher your CPM will rise — and the higher your revenues will become.

When you make a change to your ad placement, to your keywords, to yourad colors or anything else, wait a week and check your stats to see theresult. And look first at your revenues.

Bear in mind too that when you have multiple ads on a page each ad unitcounts as one impression — but you won’t be able to get three clicks fromthem! Multiple ad units then can reduce your CTR while still giving you good revenues.

You might also want to translate your results into charts. If you do want todo that, the most important things to look for are trends in CTR and inearnings. Tracking impressions too will also let you see any radicalfluctuations in traffic.