image credit: JMR64

There have been a lot of discussions in the press lately around online ad effectiveness. Is online display advertising really dying? Or is there simply a need for new metrics?
 
Over the years we could all observe the significant drop of click-through rates (CTR) from 5% to 0.1%. This could indicate that either online display advertising is dying or that consumers refuse to click on the ad unit.

The introduction of rich media formats allowed marketers to bring a user experience from the website to an advertising unit. So now that the consumer can get the experience without leaving the online ad, it’s more apparent that other metrics are needed to measure the full range of interaction that might take place with online advertising.
 
On one hand, the recent trends created a huge challenge for the online industry. On the other hand, they created a big opportunity to introduce new success metrics which would replace rather obsolete CTR and help to prove online ad effectiveness.
 

OPA’s (online publisher association) and Comscore recent research (The Silent Click: Building Brands Online)
showed that consumers exposed to display ads spend over 50% more time
on the advertiser’s site the following months, viewing over 50% more
pages than average visitors.
 
Eyeblaster
is another company which has made some strides in order to introduce a
new type of measurement. In their fourth issue of Analytics Bulletin,
“Trends of Time and Attention in Online Advertising,”  Eyeblaster
introduced a new metric called “Dwell.” Dwelling on an ad is
spending time with it, including mouse-overs, user-initiated video
duration, user-initiated expansion duration and other user-initiated
customer interaction durations.
 

The difference between click and dwell
rates are quite expansive. For example, the average worldwide CTR for
rich media ads was 0.35% in 2008. The average dwell rate was 8.71%. In
North America expandable banners had only a 0.3% CTR, but a 7.1% dwell
rate.
 
Here are few more pointed findings from the study:
 
       • Consumers are 25 times more likely to spend meaningful time on the ad than click it

       • When they do spend time, consumers spend close to a full minute of active engagement

       • Video increases dwell rate by 30% and dwell time by 200% (in the US) or 100%(globally)

       • Consumers react to ads differently depending on the time of day, week, or year

       • Home-page media offers one of the highest dwell rates, but lowest dwell time

Are
the new metrics going to cease the huge frustration around online
metrics for marketers? My guess is probably not — unless the new
metrics get accepted by the online industry. However this is a step in
the right direction.

Jitka Petrickova

Source: OPA Comscore “The Silent Click: Building Brands Online; Eyeblaster Analytics Bulletin Issue 4; eMarketer