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6% of Web Users Generate 50% of Ad Clicks
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 12, 2008 04:13 PM
from the born-to-click dept.
from the born-to-click dept.
pcause writes "A recent study finds that 6% of Web users generate 50% of the click-throughs. Worse news for advertisers: these clickers are not representative of the population as a whole, most have incomes under $40K, and their clicks are not related to any offline buying. (They are mostly males between 25 and 44 years of age.) The number of clicks on an ad campaign is also not strongly correlated with brand awareness for the ads' subject, according to the study. This is bad news for ad-supported Web sites and businesses, as rates should drop if the Net economy begins to take these findings seriously."
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The remaining 50% (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The remaining 50% (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Slogan (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Like thousands of other /.ers... (Score:5, Funny)
When Mom calls long distance, Talking Woman is cheerful and polite in the background. Mom thinks I've finally found a nice girl and given up computers.
Parent
Re:Like thousands of other /.ers... (Score:5, Funny)
So calling the basement is long distance now? The phone company is ripping you off, man.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Who's on patrol at Slashdot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who's on patrol at Slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not? The summary was, as usual, quite inaccurate: "This is bad news for ad-supported Web sites and businesses, as rates should drop if the Net economy begins to take these findings seriously." That's not what the article says.
The article says "While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns." This is actually good news for sites like Slashdot and other technical sites that cater to a higher-end/less-clicky audience. It's essentially saying, "Don't assume the campaign isn't working just because you don't get click-throughs."
As such, I'd expect it to raise rates since it's basically eliminating the only "reliable" way of concluding that an ad is or isn't working. They're saying that that one metric that people thought they had is actually a poor indicator of success.
To me, this looks like something that will drive the industry back to pay-per-impression rather than pay-per-click--at least for branding campaigns. Which are really the most important for bigger advertising spenders anyway. If you put a banner up for a vacation to Hawaii, sure, a few people will already be planning a vacation to Hawaii and might click. And maybe a few will say "Hey, Hawaii, great idea, let's go." But for the vast majority, that's just one more thing that gets in their mind so when they do think of a vacation--perhaps months after the banner ad--well, they might just be a little more likely to go to Hawaii than some other destination.
The value of advertising is usually in targeting long-term spending habits, not getting a one-time sale. You think that when someone advertises for millions during the Superbowl that they actually get a million dollars of immediate business as a direct result of that ad? Nah... but over time it gets in their consciousness and leads to changes in long-term spending habits that do more than pay for themselves.
Parent
Re:Who's on patrol at Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft
You'd come out of the "how do we get Microsoft to leave us alone without subjugating ourselves to Google" brainstorm meeting determined to convince Microsoft that online advertising is not the next big thing, it's the next big inflated idea that's about to burst and take a lot down with it. A huge part of Microsoft's reasoning behind the acquisition is that online advertising is about to take off, and if they can't kill Google now they'd better buy the #2 player so they have a larger piece of that pie. So you'd quietly see to it that this report about the value of ad clicks gets a lot of attention right after Microsoft announces it's going to pursue a hostile takeover.
Shareholders
Shareholders believe Yahoo has been losing value because it's losing to Google in the ad space, so Yahoo would want to point out that ads aren't the whole game for them. This report downplays the value of online advertising in the future, which would allow Yahoo to suggest that its premium, subscriber services will be a significant source of revenue. This is a bad idea, though, in my opinion. I've been subscribing to their premium services for years, but recently decided to cancel them after someone hijacked my Yahoo account, changed my password and began impersonating me through IM, email and other services during the three days it took them to get me back into my account. And in the aftermath, Yahoo has ignored every email I've sent about this. Bottom line: Yahoo lacks the security and customer service to maintain subscription-based services, and as this happens to more people they will also drop the services.
Parent
Re:Who's on patrol at Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
HAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA (Score:2, Insightful)
hahahahaahahahahahahahahahaha
sell now suckerss!!!
Re:HAHAHAAHAHHAHAHA (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if googles text ads had a better rate than a lot of the banner ads I see.
Seriously, how many people are going to buy anything that was advertised with a "punch the monkey" style ad? How many people choose their mortgage company because they saw some flashing crap on the web. The people who are drawn in by these ads don't buy houses.
On the other hand, every time I do a google search I check those ads out. When I'm emailing about something in gmail I will often see related ads and they are often very relevant. Several times I have written an email to someone with a line like "I wonder where I could buy something like X?" and as soon as I send I see an ad up top for a web site that sells just what I am looking for. Thats good advertising. I'm not clicking through because I felt like playing some stupid flash game in an ad, I'm clicking through because I wanted to buy the product being advertised.
I think its really more an issue of the approach the advertisements take to get those clicks that has been resulting in less sales per click.
Parent
Gmail thinks I'm gay (Score:3, Funny)
If you're @ the googleplex please make sure gmail knows I'm straight! I am much more likely to click if it seems likely there's nekkid womenz on the other end.
We must do something about this. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't let 5% of the ad clickers ruin the internet "experience" for the rest of the users.
Re:We must do something about this. (Score:5, Funny)
If only there were some way of putting the ads on the screen without even having to click on them. Perhaps the ads could even be in separate browser windows that are created and filled with ad content automatically--"popping up," if you will, onto the screen? That way, the user can take full advantage of valuable money-saving opportunities without having to complete the arduous task of clicking a mouse button!
Dare to dream, dare to dream.
Parent
Rates or targets? (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I think this is a good sign. Adds targeting specific audiences and communities tend to be more respectful and interesting. If these findings promote that kind of advertising instead of flashing spams adds designed to distract, then hooray!
Also (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What kind of person even sees the ads on
Low clickthrough is not necessarily a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem here is that the pay-per-click method doesn't charge advertisers fairly. A combination pay-per-view, and pay-per-click model might be better.
Sorry, had to (Score:5, Funny)
- Not in our dreams! Only on TV and radio. And in magazines. And movies. And at ballgames. And on buses. And milk cartons. And t-shirts. And bananas. And written on the sky. But not in dreams! No sirree!
Parent
Not surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
I am less than shocked.
This is good news (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, killing all the people who buy from spammers, I still support, though I'd rather kill the spammers themselves. Spammers are truly evil; the people who buy from them are merely stupid.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference?
Why track them down? (Score:3, Funny)
Counter-argument... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no "click" on TV or radio or newspapers, just an impression. But when people realized that there *was* a click-through to be recorded on the web, they wanted to pay for that under the assumption that click-through and impression were correlated and therefore that they could gauge if their intended audience was getting the ads by the level of click-through.
This makes things easy. If the click-through on an advertisement is high, clearly you need to keep it there. If it's low, it's clearly not properly targeted. This can be automated to run without human intervention. The survey disproves this.
So, really, what it's showing is that the web advertising market needs to be structured more like a traditional media buy.
I suspect the biggest winners in this market will be large web companies with enough folks to have an advertisement team and captured demographics information to be able to say "Sure the click-throughs are all 35 year old virgins with a crap job, but the *viewers* are actually mostly upper management level people with a wife and a mistress"
And, since this is Slashdot, we can make the logical conclusion that the companies in the article were paid by one of the aforementioned large web companies with enough folks to have an advertisement team and captured demographics information.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Whooosh... I'm sure you'd like that, as an ad buyer. But that'd be entirely unfair to the person providing content that is providing the eyeballs to you. As others have been saying here--including this article--except for a few rares cases that depend on impulse buying, the biggest ROI for advertisement is influencing long-term buying decisions rather than trying to provoke an immediate one.
If Ford does some banner advertisi
Well Duuuh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it any wonder that the people who are clicking on ads constantly are not the "average joe?" Most people hate commercials and other junk that gets in the way of what they were looking at.
"Oh, another ad for the same BMW I switched away stations on the radio, muted on TV, and flipped past in the newspaper. I think I'll click on this one because it's in the middle of my news story about Britney Spears' latest breakdown."
I wonder what correlation there is between this 6% and the people who click on the "V1agr@" spams in their email.
Re:Well Duuuh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Clickthrough isn't all it's about (Score:4, Insightful)
Furthermore there are only two ads I click on and it NEVER leads to my buying things. The first are informational ads. Like I clicked on that Chevron Ad on Slashdot recently. I was interested in all the various energy distribution and generation methods they were persuing. The Second are Text ads for companies I really dislike. I will click the advertised link because I know it is costing them money. Ya it may only be one cent but it makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
FTA: (Score:3, Funny)
So basically they're unemployable opportunists with no ability to assess risks.
The surprise here is that it took three companies working together to figure this out.
The principle of factor sparsity ? [pareto] (Score:3, Interesting)
Think the industry is FINALLY getting it yet? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just like television and other successful forms of ad generated industries it is all about product placement and brand recognition that has to be used.
The smartest advertising sites have ads for Coke, or Honda where the advertisers DON'T expect the person to click, but to just view. Just like TV...
After 100 years of influention psychology in advertising for brand recognition, it is scary that a 'bright' new technology doesn't understand the simplicity.
No matter if you go back to the begining of a 'want' instead of a 'need' consumer base that boomed in the 50s or even the first 'marketing' firms based on Freud during the 'need' based economy in the US prior to that, nothing has changed.
Do you think Burma-Shave would have worked if people had to get out of their cars and pick up a flyer on the product at each sign?
Sure things are faster and harder to notice on the internet, but still, you got 5 secs to grab someone's attention, don't disturb or annoy them and DON'T make them do anything and you have a successful ad. PERIOD.
Some of the best advertising that is working on the internet is from youtube type of sites providing commericial content. You can watch any TV show in the world legally, and at your own schedule and you have 4 or 5 15secs pauses of ads. Yet people are 'use' to it, and the ads are becoming the most successful because they live up to the simple rules from the above paragraph.
This can be done with static site and news as well, heck even do a cute Flash/Silverlight video on the page, just don't use sound and don't expand over crap to disturb the person. Product recognition is not a conscious thing anyway, so determining it by ad clicks requires concious involvement. Bad Idea, Bad Model, and Bad Method to test advertising success.
We still compare Apples to Apples (Score:4, Interesting)
There are only 2 goals for an ad, brand awareness, or profit.
I don't need to tell you about brand awareness, you've all seen ads that we're on the internet before, and can figure out why they're there.
For profit ones just break it down into ROI. You don't *want* everyone clicking on your ad. That's why you hear a lot more about "click-fraud" than "impression fraud" when you're in internet advertising.
The original article seems like it was written by people using very out dated methods of media buying. I don't know anyone who evaluates ads based solely on "clicks" for the same reason I don't know know anyone who evaluates websites based on "hits" anymore.
Sure, we still look at Cost per Click; because that ties back into brand awareness values to some extent, but the real vector is Cost per *Conversion*; what did we pay per *customer*. Ya figure out how much a customer is worth, you know how effective your ads are.
But internet advertising is still relatively new. It has a long way to go catch up to even Direct Mail in many cases. And as long as it's still profitable to do it clumsily, you'll see it done clumsily.
Which is also the reason that women see ads for Viagra, and men see ads for Oprah's book club.
Matches Direct Mail (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I checked, getting a 6% "click thru" via direct mail advertising was considered a really good run.
(That is... customer gets ad, and calls for info or comes in)
Direct Mail is still profitable...
My understanding of brand on the internet (Score:3, Interesting)
On the internet, brand isn't near as important as relevance. That said, once relevance is achieved and the web surfer has a choice of web pages to choose from, then brand plays a more prominent role (ie: they'll choose a website they know over one they don't know).
As for the rest of the study's findings, I think you couldn't possibly convince a reputable marketer not to invest more money/talent/energy into online marketing. There's a lot of fluidity and change on the internet, but the upside is just far too great.
Re:No Money (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The impulsiveness of purchases is highest in low income categories. The middle class actually counts pennies much more and the rich have someone counting for them. Example, my wife nearly choked on her dinner watching BBC News awhile ago when they reported the failure of a pyramid "christmas present purchase" scheme predominantly used by the poor. She was very sympathetic until she heard the numbers lost by most families which were in the range of 400-800 pounds. We are reasonably well off and sorry, no way in hell for us to spend that for a Christmas budget. That is more like what we will spend in several years. So after that she immediately switched to a "well deserved, serves you right" mode.
2. The worst perception of his personal finance state in the developed world is
Overall, the study matches very well the actual "buy based on advertisement" demographic. I do not see anything particularly detrimental to the online ad business coming out of it. It is business as usual. Move along.
Parent
Re:No Money (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, when I'm doing better economically I find myself becoming thrifty. As soon as I see that money piling up in the bank I want to see how much more I can save.
Thankfully, I'm in the latter state right now, and I find myself cooking a lot more (as opposed to eating out) and buying less unnecessary items like beer and snacks.
But maybe I'm just weird.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I was following you up to that last point.
Cooking at home is a GREAT thing to do....better for you, less additives (cooking from scratch), and can be fun alone or with friends.
But, "unecessary items like BEER"?!??! Dude, get your priorities straight, I mean, beer is a food group all of its own!! I would have a VERY hard time making a roux, withou
Re:No Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Further note that impulse items are low-priced items. A person who impulsively buys a car, but can't pay for it, doesn't help the seller who has to go find it. An impulse item may be stupid rather than it's-ok-to-have-extra, like batteries or tissues, but it has to be affordable to appeal to many people.
Tasteful ads that don't need clicking but still get the message across ought to still create some business. The buyer may have to be reminded a large number of times that s/he still has yet to make that purchase. It actually is not that hard to interest a buyer who is in the market--for the most part, follow the buyer's line of desire and counteract any objections like "burns too much gas", "too hard to see in daylight," whatever. Also to consider for web ad success--buyers are used to getting satisfaction from bricks-and-mortars stores, and the same completeness of service needs to be apparent the instant a banner ad is displayed.
There are many things that I want to know about a product/service, but I see very few everyday items advertised on the Internet on popular web sites. And ads resembling the fearful popup just scream "fear this product" and "fear the Internet", or at the very least they say "we don't appreciate the paranoia". Would there not be an automatic distrust of banner ads if useful items like power saws, eminently sellable from a manufacturer, don't appear in online ads? If only weird things are sold on the Internet, then only weird people will even consider looking at an online ad.
Clicking on an ad has been stigmatized, but the ad could do better if it displays an actual URL. After the user goes to the company site, there has to be a "tell me what I don't know" presentation. The user with money is typically sitting with a fancy computer with a number of cool features--this user doesn't want a few silly words and primitive line drawings. This user expects the business to expose itself on the record, in depth and detail. And it has to be easy or else there are a million other web sites begging to be seen.
Consumer confidence needs to be maintained. McDonald's shows part of the kitchen to people placing orders. Online purchasers may feel better, and may well be attracted, with visual monitoring and presentation of factories, packaging, delivery, as well as features and how-to. Big stores present the I-invested-a-lot-of-money-so-I-have-to-serve-you-well feeling, and online ads have to get away from the I-couldn't-have-spent-much-to-make-this-cheesy-ad-so-what-the-heck-if-you-don't-care idea. If clicking an ad takes a user somewhere fantastic, the Internet will make the ad renowned. The point might not be spreading advertising money over a large number of web sites but instead concentrating more on developing a company image while having the ad appear on a few sites.
Many television ads are well-produced because television time is expensive, and the ad has to be a good seller in order to justify its existence. Web sites should charge big bucks and provide a powerful reason to captivate the audience. That would be a good thing for us who are tired of seeing weird, ugly crap littering web pages, all the reason to buy larger screens so that scrolling down won't be necessary--and of course that's why screens are wide but very short, ostensibly to show movies full screen, right? Not!
Although businesses will save anywhere and use cheap advertising where they can get as much exposure as possible. This may be detrimental to web ads as a whole, but improving technology may be making it possible for web ads to sell better, for consumers to learn more about products and services, and for transactions to be less risky. In the end, web advertising ought to evolve to the next generation while purchasing becomes less running-around. Revival of the Internet sales idea would work out as long as good service is assured in every detail.
Parent
Re:Impulse purchases (Score:3, Interesting)
The rich tend to have product requirements to meet. They tend to be more technical and have better knowledge of the product they are looking for. Here is an example;
I am involved in a new building (a church) and in the design stages they are laying out the wiring, including the low voltage stuff. An impulse buyer will simply check the price on
Re:No Money (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say poor impulse control = low money.
Parent
Re:No Money (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This is incorrect. Yes, many of those that don't go to college end up "stuck" at 16/hr jobs for the rest of their life. However, in my experience (I put myself through college doing blue collar work in petro-chemical plants) these are the same ones that couldn't have made it through college if their life depended on it. As in, they did not possess the mental capacity to
Re:No Money (Score:5, Insightful)
[quote]Rich people impulse buys cars, middle class people fancy clothes and poor people tickets to the movies.[/quote]
If anyone needs to cite a source and stop spreading degrading myths it would seem to be you, the guy implying that poor people can't afford anything besides tickets to a movie (seriously? That's like $7 per person, you can get some nice clothes for the same price as 2-3 trips).
What people buy depends more on who they are than their economic status (though not being able to afford something is an impedance, credit cards have made it possible to impulse buy things you can't afford). One of the factors (ONE!) in economic status, however, is how many impulse purchases you make (I'll repeat so I don't get flamed for saying that poor people aren't good with money, that's only ONE reason).
Parent
Re:No Money (Score:5, Informative)
This [bls.gov] (table 2) shows the very lowest income bracket spends more on random things then the two brackets above it. While the other demographics seem proportionate to their income with some skewing due to the cost of living. The literature about IQ and income clearly suggest a correlation with many other factors included and sibling studies suggest Intelligence correlates with income as well. So Poor = stupid may be ham fisted but it's well supported. Note correlation isn't causation and there is ample opportunity for outliers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Advertising is one of those businesses that seem to make a ton of money and carry a lot of weight when the so-called "important messages" are spewed at us nonstop during events or shows both big and small. I too ignore almost all advertisements as a general rule. Who in their right mind would take some slick video advice from the assholes trying to sell you their widget rather than do the research on your own, or just make an impulse b