Evolving ads past clickthroughs
Talk about a nail in the coffin: Comscore has declared an 80/20 rule on online ads, with an updated study reporting that only 16% of users click on ad banners. Worse, the study says half of that population accounts for a staggering 85% of ad clicks.
Study author Linda Anderson is right when she notes, “Marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84% of Internet users who don’t click on an ad. …” Clickthroughs no longer reflect whether a run of ads is successful. Integrated campaigns are a must, and banners should be assumed as valueless in terms of driving traffic.
What do ads do, then? Done well, they can create context, awareness and recall. See enough Sony Cyber-shot ads and consumers will remember that Cyber-shot is a brand name with immediacy and relevance.
But the users seeing them won’t be clicking on those ads, no matter how large they get. Nowadays, that’s what search and social media are for.