Comscore, Starcom, and Tacoda unveiled research findings last week that are worthy of a closer look. Over the past 2 years:
- Percentage of Internet users who click on display ads dropped from 32% to 16%
- 8% of people on the web now account for 85% of all clicks
- Non clickers jumped from 68% to 84%
This leads one to believe that banner ads are a bad investment. Not so fast say the authors of the study. It just means that CTR is a weak metric for measuring the effectiveness of a banner campaign. Andrew Lipsman of Comscore said "if you're evaluating your ROI on clicks alone, you could really be throwing off your calculations." John Lowell of Starcom takes it a step further: "A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity. Your online advertising has some goal - and it's certainly not to generate clicks."
Sweet music to the ears of most of us who have sold banners as part of an online ad campaign since clicks/CTR always seem to creep up to the top of the campaign performance ladder. Now I just hope the media execs at agencies like Starcom practice what they preach.
I, for one, would love to see a day when clicks/CTR are truly tossed out the window in favor of brand measurements such as: aided/unaided awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent. Unfortunately while DR advertisers continue to spend the vast majority of the dollars flowing to the Web and Search campaigns are bought/sold on a CPC basis I don't see that happening anytime soon.
