How often a user clicks on the banner/text ads displayed on a site?

[anujgarg]

I am wondering how often a user clicks on the banner/text ads displayed on a site?

Most of the time text ads mention website name and users just copy paste on the new tab.

Then what's the purpose of having those ads on our site ?

[Niheel]

It's not that high, a lot of ads are done for branding purposes these days. Most of the time click through rates on banner ads are a fraction of a 1%.

Lot of ads are done for branding purposes or use as a blanked promotion strategy by larger corporations.

[plutojones]

Depends on a few factors. I have sites that carry Adsense ads that average about 1-2% CTR's, though large sites with a ton of traffic generally see less than 1% CTR.

If you have enough ad impressions and can get a decent CPM then it's just added revenue. A $5 CPM means you make $5 for every thousand impressions on an ad, not clicks. If you have enough PV's then this could be a good amount of revenue.

[hisharmaji]

It depends on the nature of user. If user is a newbie then he can click more on ads because of confusion (i.e. in main download button and ad download button).
The second factor is "where ad is placed?" it means if one places an ad near to any important link then the chance of click on ad is high.
Last but not least while ad networks prohibits to do this but still people do it, they change the appearance of ads in such a way that an expert may get fooled by these and clicks on them.

[meditation]

Some pays per impression as well, if you need something badly and you see the advertisement, you may click with 30% probability.

[manageknowledge]

People who recognizes them as "advertisements" may not click.

Forums like this may have very less click through rate as most of the people are from technology/programming background.