By Chris Ciardi & Joe Delatte

Live by the click, die by the click

Why it pays to look beyond click-through rates

Impressions count—even in a virtual world.

So why then neglect impressions, or view-through rates, when analyzing the success of an online marketing campaign? Many marketers follow the trend of looking solely to click-through rates to measure the efficiency of their banner campaigns, however, real value also lies in that of the impressions made. Generating clicks shouldn’t be the only success measure, and if this concept doesn’t click with advertisers, they will miss out on their marketing potential big time.

Internet advertisements won’t always generate an instantaneous response in consumers, therefore developing an integrated online marketing strategy that isn’t based entirely on click-throughs is key. It’s all about planting seeds in the consumer’s mind, making an impression—both literally and figuratively—and creating awareness that will eventually generate a buy.

A recent study conducted by digital marketing analysis company comScore, media agency Starcom USA and Tacoda questions the measurement of click-through rates as the principal means for evaluating online ad campaign performance.

The study, “Natural Born Clickers,” reveals “that the number of people who click on Web banners a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to 16 percent in March 2009.” Thus the percentage of Internet users who click on online advertisements is becoming smaller, while the number of Internet users overall is increasing. Taking only the former into consideration discounts the great value of impressions made by the latter. Clickers make up a small portion of a very large pool of Internet users and consequently should play a small role in the analysis of online marketing campaign efficiency.

The study also categorizes Internet users as heavy, moderate or light clickers. While heavy clickers currently account for 4 percent of the online population, they account for 67 percent of ad clicks. Moderate clickers, who also account for 4 percent of the online population, represent 18 percent of ad clicks. That means only 8 percent of all Internet users represent 85 percent of clicks.

Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the study, notes that, “marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns solely around the click are assigning no value to the 84 percent of Internet users who don’t click on an ad”—and that’s a pretty big chunk of target market.

View-through rates are valuable. According to the study, “online display ads generate significant lift in trademark search, online and offline sales, and brand-site visitation across all verticals, among those Internet users who were exposed to the online ad campaign—whether they clicked on the ad or not.” The impact of online impressions does not only assist with branding, but also with product stickiness, thereby generating future product searches and purchases.

Online display banner campaigns are much like traditional print and broadcast ad campaigns. Both require advertisers to take a leap of faith and trust that brand exposure through advertising will assist in creating top-of-mind awareness and influencing consumer purchase behavior. Conventional research methods still evaluate the impact of the advertisements and measure intent to buy. These concepts are especially important online, as the Internet has the largest mass audience. When emotions still drive the buy, a qualitative method of measurement is still needed, and thus impression rates need to be tracked and analyzed just as we do with click-through rates.