While it's well established in online circles that measurement is important and valuable, there are many areas where marketers still struggle to pin down exactly what to measure. As the industry matures standards should become more established, in the meantime - pay attention to what you are measuring and how. Below some statistics for you to benchmark yourself against.
Image Credit: eMarketer.com
According to Collective (February, 2010), click-through rates were the most common measurement of ad network performance. In addition, click-through rates were used by 64% of responding advertisers.
The diagram below shows the relationship between interactions and the click-through rates. The diagram shows:
- How interaction rates are highest in the 13th week.
- The average length of a campaign is only 7 weeks.
Image Credit: Collective.com
From eMarketer - Is The Click Still King? (May, 2010)
- Marketers worldwide consider conversions to be the most important success metric.
- 90% of the respondents termed conversions as ‘very important’.
- 56.7% of the respondents termed click-throughs as ‘important’.
- 72% of the marketers surveyed use click-throughs for tracking.
David Hallerman, the senior analayst of the eMarketer, says that clicks are the preferred method of measurement because they are easy to count, inexpensive to gather and most are familiar with this method. However, measuring the effectiveness of online advertising, such as the contribution to search clicks, is more complex and more expensive.
Image Credit: eMarketer.com
On the other hand, Why Marketing Strategy Should Measure More Than Clicks (May, 2010), highlights an issue with click-through rates. According to Joe Apprendi, CEO of Collective, 99.92% of online ads don’t get clicked. He goes on to say, "The industry has long known that simply seeing an ad delivers branding dividends."
Eyeblaster defines the term "dwell" as the entire course of action a consumer takes on-site prior to making purchase. It refers to the time a consumer clicks on an advert, research on the product and finally purchases it.
From Biz Report - Why marketing strategy should measure more than clicks (May, 2010)
- High dwell rates increased traffic by 69%.
- Ad placements in areas where consumers "dwell" longer causes them to stay online longer.
- Video ads increase dwell rates by 29%.
- News content, instant messaging, map sites and children's sites all have high dwell rates.
Therefore, since ads are not being clicked as often as before, it is important for marketers to look at alternative methods of measuring and increasing the effectiveness of their campaigns.
But how many are really measuring their campaigns?
From Mashable - STATS: 84% of Social Media Programs Don’t Measure ROI (August, 2009)
- 84% of respondents said they don’t currently measure the ROI (return on investment) of their Social Media programmes.
- More than 40% of respondents said they didn’t even know whether they could track ROI from their social tools.
From Collective - Display Advertising Study (May, 2010)
- Agencies and advertisers continue to rely on comScore (62%) and Neilson (53%) to measure online media.
- 37% say they rely on publisher and ad network data to measure online media more than Quantcast (27%).
- About two-thirds (64%) percent continue to use click-through rates to evaluate ad network performance.
- Video continues to gain market share, with “targeting” by far the most important factor in choosing a video ad network partner.
- 57% of those surveyed say they were likely or extremely likely to shift dollars from TV to online video in 2010.
- That percentage surges to 67% among large spenders.
- Targeting is the leading reason for selecting a video ad network, preferred by 65%, followed by reach at 51% and price at 45%.
All in all, it is important to maximise on the benefits the Internet provides us with. Companies need to track, analyse and optimise their online campaigns. This will help identify what works for the company and what doesn’t.
Also check out:
