Extremely low CTR on high traffic site

[axewater]

Hi everyone ...brbr2 weeks ago I saw a new game was almost being released, being a big fan I registered a domain name for it and built a site with Joomla CMS for it. The game can be expanded with plugins which users can create, so the game has a large community around it, and will have for quite some time (WoW anyone ?). I was already using adsense on a different, low traffic site (100 visitors per daymax), so I didn't have to wait for google to approve me .. I plugged inthe ads from day 1.brAfter 2 weeks, google placed me on 1st place for 'Oblivion Mods' (3rd or 7th on some data centers), and right away my traffic skyrocketed. Of course I worked hard to get that position... Now I'm getting 70.000 pageviews per day, from about 4000 unique visitors... You would think I could earn some serious google dollars from that. However, no matter what I try, my CTR is just awful. I can't say exactly (Google TOS) but its the lowest I have ever seen, or heard mention by anyone. Far, far, FAR below 1%. I have tried moving the ads around the page, left, top, right and in the middle of content .. but it doesn't seem to help. I'm using 3 way matching to blend in with the site, to no avail.brThe ads are responding to the keywords correctly and are therefore related to the content of my site. (My site is about an RPG game, and the ads are for other RPG game materials like cheatbooks and gold for WoW and EQ2). I really would expect at least SOME of my visitors to be interrested in that....brI'm planning to try to get away from 3 way matching and try 'screaming colors' now to see if that has any effect.brbrWhat am I doing wrong ? You can see my site in my signature below. If I could just get 1% CTR I would be very happy.brbrps: 70k views is from my site stats .. google counts only about half of that, I'm guessing due to ppl running various ad blockers.brbr

[mertero]

The first thing I would try is using AdLinks units. I have found that a horizontal unit is great. They now account for over 50% of my income.

Regards,