14 DAY TRIAL // One of the most important sources of accountability for Internet display advertising is being questioned by the results of the Natural Born Clickers survey, conducted by comScore, media agency Starcom USA and behavioral targeting network Tacoda. Click-through rates have long been used as an ad negotiation currency, but the study brings that idea some clouds overhead.
Apparently there's no connection between the attitude the public has over a brand and the number of times a banner advertising is clicked. That should get digital campaigns to focus less on the optimizing for high click rates, as it does not impact on the overall campaign performance.
Just 6 percent of the online population accounts for about 50 percent of the total display clicks. Dubbed heavy clickers, they are aged 25 - 44 and belong to households that have an income below $40,000 per year. Easily spotted because of their online behavior, they turned out to be the advertiser's nightmare, who cannot rely any further on their statistics that had click-through rate as the centerfold. Heavy clickers spend roughly four times more time online than the rest of the people and because of that they do not fall under proportionately reflecting online attitude.
Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore said that "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. [?] For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what's really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign's effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience."