I think the industry standard is something like 0.1% click through rate (1 in 1000 people will click on your banner). I don’t see how this can be a good return on investment. Even if 1 of 1000 click on the banner, statistics are not on your side. 90% of the people who click will stay on your site for less than 5 seconds. This is fine. You might still want to continue and spend money on them. But the thing is no one is going to talk about a banner. When was the last time someone told you about the funny banner they’ve clicked on last night? Banner will not create word of mouth and you won’t get more for your buck. Banners are not experiences and if you do decide to go for them, just remember that your dollar is not working for you. It’s sunbathing.
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Over 90 million dollars sunbathing last financial year… and *only* growing at 50% pa. Gotta be something in it
by Ross on November 30th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
But then isn’t it the same for TV ads? Who ever clicks on them? And when was the last time you had a conversation (with someone not in the industry) about a TV commercial that they started?
So, perhaps we shouldn’t be using clicks as a measure for banners. Or maybe we should except that all media dollars are basically sunbathing.
by Annon on December 4th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Thanks for the figures Ross! Annon, I agree. Let’s come up with a different measure. I believe the the only way to work out the dollar is more targeted, creative and relevant “advertising”.
by Tamir on December 5th, 2007 at 4:48 am
I don’t doubt the effectiveness of banners. It has been tried, tested, and works…. what I can’t get my head around is the 0.01% “industry average”. The only reason it is at 0.01% is because it can’t get any lower! Most campaigns I’ve worked with in a global agency have seen mostly an average of 0.2%-0.5% CTR. In comparison to the industry average of 0.01%, the larger agency’s work is always delivering superior results to the industry in the client’s eyes!! In all of digital’s ability to target and deliver qualified traffic to the client’s website, there must be a more efficient way in doing that than a standard banner approach. Buy 1,000,000 banner impressions, get a 0.01% CTR, to deliver 100 clicks is hardly efficient (even thou they are “qualified” leads). Yes, digital media is increasing YOY, but I believe that is due to marketers becoming more comfortable with using digital media (and perhaps jumping on to the digital wagon because my competitors are). So it seems to me, its all a play in numbers. Media is all about trading Opportunity to See.. ie. TVC, magazine FPC, banner Imps, etc. But as digital media evolves so should our thinking and to start use digital media in a more advance way to deliver our message. Yes banners work but we have to remove the digital industry’s guilt of measuring campaigns by Clicks / CTR and perhaps change the metrics to be inline with the rest of it’s media channels.
by dave on December 5th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Hi Guys,
I agree with your thoughts above, but surely we need to make it as easy for the old marketing director dinosaurs out there (and i feel there still are a few) to spend online as we can? a industry standard CTR of 0.1% still gives us (and clients) a barometer of how their campaign is connecting with consumers - and i’ve yet to see a pretty darn good measure of ‘engagement’ that a client feels is a ‘hard’ measure enough for them to take back and say digital is kicking TV butt.
thoughts/comments?
by Wilson on January 24th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Hi Wilson,
You are right that there are a few “dinosaurs” and perhaps they need to take the baby steps in doing banners first… buying a 15sec spot on a website. Engagement like any medium will always be hard to measure, but with digital we can at least measure time spent on a site / site duration. There was talk on US agencies moving measurements away from CTR and focus more on site duration… which Fairfax digital was looking to adopt. CTR is not dead as it is still a valid metrics but its not the only metric. Because of the volume of data, digital can often be caught up with numbers and focus heavily on CTRs, CPAs, etc. Perhaps we should start looking beyond that and start thinking Branding strategy… the understanding of digital behaviour and influencing the influencers. If digital agencies can do that successfully, it will translate to a language the “dinosaurs” will understand, bottom line sales. Your thoughts?
by dave on January 24th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I agree!
Have always thought i ‘digital dashboard’ or something similar that would demistify and go past all the terminology would help clients understand the meaning behind the jargon. Still amazed though at the (small but significant) number of clients with their heads in the sand!
by Wilson on January 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm