Musings

Flaws in quantifying online advertising success

6th November 2009

the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32% of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8% of the Internet user base) accounting for 85% of all clicks.

Jack Loechner – MediaPost

Interesting stuff there indicating an ‘alarming’ drop in click through rates. Jack goes on to talk about how advertisers are using these figures to express a flaw in the system, and how they are wrong to do so.

The internet is a constantly evolving entity but equally so are the people who who use it, just because we’re not clicking ads as much as we used to doesn’t make them ineffective. We still see, read and hear them and that’s worked just fine for television, radio and print advertising up until now. Just as he says:

online display ads generate significant lift in trademark search, online and offline sales, and brand-site visitation across all verticals, among those internet users who were exposed to the online ad campaigns – whether they clicked on the ad or not.

Interesting stuff, and useful for those of us who use or implement online advertising.

p.s. apologies for the crappy stock imagery there, I was feeling a tad lazy