Display ad success 'could be obscured by click-through rates'

13th February 2008

The effectiveness of display advertising may not be accurately measured by click-through rates, a new study warns.

While 'heavy-clickers' comprise 50 per cent of all display ad clicks, a report from comScore, Starcom and Tacoda points out that such users only represent six per cent of the internet population.

As such, the Natural Born Clickers survey points out that the majority of the behaviour trends recorded by click-through metrics could relate to just a small proportion of the target demographic.

Grant Prentice, USA director of connections research and analytics with Starcom, notes that analytical methods that link online exposure to sales and examine shifts in brand attitude metrics could be more useful to marketers.

"Natural Born Clickers shows us that we can't count on click-through rate as our primary success metric for display ads," he comments.

A recent article in MediaPost asserted that local newspaper sites are joining display ad networks to support revenue growth.