Why Do People Click?

CTR (Click Thru Rate)

• Has emerged as the benchmark, or primary measurement criterion around ad effectiveness

• Today’s average CTR: 0.3%

• Offers a small part of a much larger picture

• One of the most misleading metrics available

• No measure of consumer intent

Industry average for Flash by category

Click-Thru Behavior

Clickers Non-Clickers Click Only OnceClick More Often

Clickers per Month How Much Clickers Click

Majority of Banner Clicks

So who is causing all this misleading information?

Heavy Clickers:Consumer segment most likely to respond to online display advertising

Clicker Type # of clicks% of

Internet Population

% of clickers

% of clicks

Heavy 4 + 6% 18% 50%

Moderate 2-3 10% 31% 30%

Light 1 10% 51% 20%

Non 0 68% - -

• Not representative of the general public

• Ages 25-44

• Tend to be in the lower income brackets

• Spend 4x more time online than non-clickers

• Consume more online media than non-clickers

• Entire web experience appears to be leisure time

• Same people that tend to open direct mail and love to talk to telemarketers

Heavy Clickers: Who are they?

Other Characteristics...• Their spending does not reflect their level of participation

• Have a markedly different web-surfing pattern than non-clickers

• Visit auctions, gambling, job search, and gaming sites, as opposed to portals, search, news, and finance websites often visited by non-clickers

• No relationship between the measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked

As A Result...

• Advertisers are letting somewhere between 6-16% of the Internet population dictate their online strategy

• Lead to misleading CTRS

• Show us that we can’t count on CTR as our primary success metric for display ads

What Can We Do?

Find an environment where typically “normal” clickers enter into the heavy clicker mindset:

• The category where user set is spending disproportionate amounts of time to utilize their interest

Importance of the Creative Format

Rich media

• Not effective in generating clicks when compared to non-rich media

• 4 times more effective in generating conversions

Non-rich media

• Less expensive

• Non-rich media campaign can perform as well as rich media if campaign intent is to generate clicks

Consumer Intention

• One of the most valuable metrics

• Need to Measure:

• Reason behind the click

• What takes place after the click

• In order to effectively identify those site visitors who show intention behaviors vs. those who don’t

What is the cause of a higher than average CTR?

• The type or quality of the offer that drew interest?

• The design?

• The format?

• Great media placement?

• Targeting?

• Perhaps it’s truly a combination of many variables

• There’s a huge difference between the intentions of visitors to a website (sometimes it’s by mistake)

• Would you rather have a click from someone who you KNOW is interested in your offering, or from someone who MIGHT be interested?

The Importance of Understanding “Why”

Behavioral Targeting

• The value of each click-thru to the site can be directly determined

• Identifies the “why” behind each click

• Offers advertisers the alternative of “smart CTR”

• Gives them a serious advantage over those still relying on CTR alone

Adding a record of:• pages visited while on the site

• topics covered

• features interacted with

• length of time each visit

• when key performance indicators (KPIs) were achieved

Gives advertisers access to data that tells a much more complete story

CTR Pro’s & Con’s

Pros Cons

Relevant for Direct Response ad campaigns where users are looking to

make an immediate purchase of tickets or other products

Wrong measurement for brand-building campaigns. Should be

measuring Impressions for brand-building.

Good at building awareness Not good at generating leads

If exposure, as opposed to sales, is a goal, CTR can be useful

Overlooks the importance of branding while drawing conclusions from people who may not be representative of the

target audience

• Cannot rely on CTR alone

• True Measures of Online Advertising Efficacy:

• shifts in brand attitude metrics

• analytics (tying online exposures to sales)

Conclusion

Sources:• “Banner Ad Clickers Not Like Other Web Users: Study” -Richard H. Levey, Chief Marketer

• “BT: Beyond the Click” -Jeff Hirsch, Media Post Publications, January 14, 2008

• “Know Your Limits, The Push Beyond Them” -Stuart Derrick, March 21, 2007

• “Natural Born Clickers” -Erin Hunter, comScore, Kim McCarthy, Starcom, Greg Rogers, TACODA - Media Brand Summit

• “Natural Born Clickers: These people aren’t helping results, they’re ruining them” -Julie Powers, Internet Marketing Report, February 15, 2008

• “New Study Shows that Heavy Clickers Distort Reality of Display Advertising Click-Thru Metrics” -Andrew Lipsman, comScore, February 12, 2008

• “Online Consumer Behavior and Interactive Marketing” -Advertising.com, Inc., May 2003

• “Some consumers are click farms themselves” -eMarketer, Febuary 28, 2008

• “Study: Heavy Clickers Account for Half of Display Click-Throughs” -Mark Walsh, Media Post Publications, February 12, 2008

• “Web Site Click-Through Rates Soar WIth Human Touch” -Tanya Irwin, Media Post Publications, Augst 6, 2007

• “Which Rich Media Type Works Best?” -eMarketer, September 14, 2007