Are click ads essentially useless?
p2pnet news view Advertising | P2P:- Our theory on advertising click-throughs goes like this:
People who pay the likes of Google for click-throughs aren’t customers, they’re idiots.
Do they really, really believe when people click through to an ad, a significant number of them actually end up buying anything?
Not many do, we’d bet.
Now, “The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years, and only 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks, according to the most recent Natural Born Clickers study from ComScore and media agency Starcom,” says Advertising Age.
Natural Born Suckers would be more like it.
Anyway, the decreases beg the question, ‘Is the long-used click-through rate now officially useless?’ – says the story.
Should that be, ‘Is the long-used click-through now officially useless?’
It goes on »»»
Clickers only represent 16% of U.S. internet users, according to ComScore data from March. The study initially found that 32% clicked on display advertising in July 2007. If that first study, released last year, crystallized skepticism that click-through rates weren’t the be-all end-all success metric for display, this most recent report might just be the last nail in the digital coffin.
What’s more, the story, AdAge on, “the 8% of internet users that compose a majority of clicks is also down by half from the last study, which found 16% are responsible for 80% of clicks. The 2008 study found half of all clicks come from lower-income young adults, so prizing clicks ignores the vast majority of internet users, especially the types of users many marketers want to reach. This year, the study focused more on alternative measurement, suggesting that a low number of clicks doesn’t necessarily mean banners don’t work, but that marketers are looking at the wrong success metrics.”
But of course! Wrong metrics!
“From client studies, ComScore found that display ads, regardless of clicks, generate significant lift in brand-site visitation, trademark search (searching for, say, Toyota or Prius) and both online and offline sales among those exposed to the ads,” says the story.
“Within one week, consumers exposed to a display ad were 65% more likely to visit the advertiser’s site than users who never saw the ad. Even at four weeks, people exposed to displays ads are 45% more likely to visit the brand’s site.
” ‘The click has always been of dubious value,’ said Joshua Spanier, director of communication strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. ‘But clicks are easy to understand and easy to measure. We still know that display advertising has unequivocal value; your search performance improves as well. Together, search and display are much stronger than apart’.”
Visits, smishits.
How many people actually buy anything?
AdAge doesn’t say.
Advertising Age – What to Measure? Only 16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads, Sepember 30, 2009
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October 2nd, 2009 at 2:43 pm
The “click-through” function is not the real motivation of these ads these days, anyway.
I’d say it’s the DATA MINING.
Most sites that have them also have a “partnership” or “affiliate” clause, buried in their user policies, that basically says they reserve the right to allow all the 3rd party advertisers to place tracking cookies on your computer, thus allowing them to follow you around while you’re surfing, regardless of whether you click on an ad or not.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:51 pm
You’re right, DA, but at what cost?
Really, when you get down to it, privacy considerations aside, in practical terms, how valuable is that information, I wonder?
Cheers!
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
“…in practical terms, how valuable is that information…?”
It would seem that mined data has far more value than the limited revenue they’re getting from the ads, judging by the almost religious diligence they all show both in placing the numerous tracking cookies, and in the limitless, underhanded tactics they’re willing to resort to in circumventing users’ settings and security in order to keep them placed.
October 2nd, 2009 at 5:43 pm
“and in the limitless, underhanded tactics they’re willing to resort to in circumventing users’ settings and security in order to keep them placed.”
You said exactly what I was thinking. Very telling that is.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
“Most sites that have them also have a “partnership” or “affiliate” clause, buried in their user policies, that basically says they reserve the right to allow all the 3rd party advertisers to place tracking cookies on your computer, thus allowing them to follow you around while you’re surfing,”
Yes but since I delete everything in the browser cash including cookies and .SOl files it is not working with me anyway.
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:49 pm
“Yes but since I delete everything in the browser cash including cookies and .SOl files it is not working with me anyway.”
Sure, I do all that, as well as removing all sorts of stuff from other folders not serviced by the browser. The point was, if you look carefully at everything these sites are putting on your computer, it’s quite obvious they don’t give a sweet fuck about your settings, your privacy, your consent, or even if your computer goes down trying to purge what they’ve done – they’re determined to keep tracking you and sharing what they find with their “affiliates” and building as complete a database on everyone as possible. Some are even using “drive-by installers” to plant rootkits and assorted malware as soon as the first page’s URL resolves.
Seems Google is one of the largest driving forces in this movement (with the exception of the malware usage). Right from the first search page, Google starts planting the cookies. And they’re no longer content to use standard cookies either. They tend to now plant html and Flash cookies in addition to the standard ones, so you end up with at least 3 varieties of tracking cookies – one of them not residing in your browser. In addition, every page you go to with a Google Ad on it tries to grab more info from you and add it to Google’s global database.
Deleting cookies is not enough anymore.
You’d have to keep doing it for every single page you visit.
You now need to tighten the writing permissions to your drive itself and prevent unwanted files from being created outside of your browser.
October 3rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
in general ads dont make me buy something. ad supported content is a time consumer but %wise 99% of the time it never leads to me buying something.
except when i ran out an bought that Cadillac or 3 after seeing a 30 second pre roll …..
October 4th, 2009 at 1:26 am
i never click on ads. i have them all blocked.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Most ads seem target idiots, and that’s why many people choose to ignore them. In contrast, genuinely good deals scarcely need advertising, because word will quickly spread across the internet virally by users themselves.
It now appears that P2PNET was given a rotten deal by a certain usenet provider that once advertised here. This same company is now offering (under a different label) $10/month unlimited SSL usenet through its advertising partner websites, which is nearly the identical service that P2PNET readers would have had to cough up $30/month for.
We should all thank Jon Newton for serving as the cannon fodder in this usenet price war. The never-ending complaints of high prices apparently did get noticed by this advertiser, who recently rolled out huge price cuts on its $10 “limited time” special (which require a special link to access) that even beats the price of a frequently mentioned cutrate competitor. As this is a company which has NEVER cut prices before, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the frequent bashing it got here was probably a factor.
Not to rub salt in the wounds, but if p2pnet had managed to negotiate an exclusive deal on a $10/month special on unlimited usenet, it would not only have been a financial success, but would have eliminated much of the vitriol and ill-will that unfortunately resulted from promoting what many believed to be a grossly over-priced product — and then censoring negative comment.