I’ve been running a little experiment using AdSense. We tend to see some improvements from moving around where the ads go, but one thing that’s always bugged me is the content of the ads. It’s not always relevant.

Relevance has a couple of points. First, relevance to your content. Second, relevance to your readers. So, if I talk about a new blog innovation here or over on Blogaholics, we’ll get all the ads to start your own blog, write content, etc.

However, experience and knowledge has shown me that a good many of my readers here, and most on Blogaholics, are sophisticated bloggers already. Or, at least, already have a blog. So, these ads are relevant to the content I am writing about, but not to my readers.

So, my solution was to watch daily for those ads and to block them using the Competitive Ad filter. Yes, this is not the purpose for the filter. And perhaps would annoy some advertisers. But, seriously, they were not getting clicks anyway.

So, the result? A large improvement in CTR. Clickthroughs way up.

It is an interesting study that I suggest you try.