Digital marketing research company comScore has released updated findings that show US Internet users are much less likely to click on display ads than they were two years ago.
comScore’s 2007 research, conducted in collaboration with Starcom USA and Tacoda, showed 32 percent of Internet users clicked on at least one display ad during the month of July. By March 2009 this number had dropped to 16 percent, with just 8 percent of users accounting for 85 percent of all clicks.
But the report’s author, comScore vice president of marketing solutions Linda Anderson, argues the decreased chances of display ads being clicked does not mean display ads have no value at all:
“Today, marketers who attempt to optimise their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad. That’s precisely the wrong thing to do, because other comScore research has shown that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact.
As a result, savvy marketers are moving to an evaluation of the impact that all ad impressions – whether clicked or not – have on consumer behaviour, mirroring the manner in which traditional advertising has been measured for decades using reach and frequency metrics.”
“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,” added Starcom USA senior vice president/director of research and analytics John Lowell. “You want people to visit your website, seek more information, purchase a product, become a lead, keep your brand top of mind, learn something new, feel differently – the list goes on. Regardless of whether the consumer clicked on an ad or not, the key is to determine how that ad unit influenced them to think, feel or do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise.”
comScore states that it has conducted over 200 studies demonstrating the effectiveness of display ads in terms of brand site visitation, trademark search, and online and offline sales.
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