NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> LE Targetting has cut CTR; note on FlyCast
ONLINE-ADS>> LE Targetting has cut CTR; note on FlyCast
Mark J. Welch, Attorney at Law (markwelch_nospam_at_ca-probate.com)
Sat, 26 Jul 1997 10:05:31 -0700
Okay, I think I have given targetting with LinkExchange
enough time for a preliminary comment, although my results
are certainly not based on enough traffic to be statistically
significant.
Prior to targetting, my LinkExchange banner had a
click-through of about 150:1, due to its very specialized
nature (and its poor design, I concede). With targetting,
the click-through ratio (CTR) originally increased very
slightly, but then it plummetted to a range between
250:1 and 300:1 (e.g. 0.3% to 0.4%).
I am not sure why; I have tried tweaking the targetted
categories, narrowing and broadening them, and it just
seems that whatever I do, the click-through ratio keeps
dropping.
The same exact thing happened earlier this spring
with Financial Ad Trader (a narrow-focus banner
exchange) and with SmartClicks: the ratio was
initially quite good, but as the programs expanded,
the click-through ratioes plummetted (to rates of
0.5% or below). I attributed the results in those
two cases to "cheating" by affiliates, but perhaps
I was wrong.
To see my LE stats, see:
http://cgi.linkexchange.com/cgi-bin/pubstats.exe?X003477
http://cgi.linkexchange.com/cgi-bin/pubstats.exe?X283986
========== A NOTE ABOUT FLYCAST: =============
I have had four modest-traffic pages signed up with
Flycast for about 5 weeks, and after I accrued $35
in royalties (at an average CPM of about $2.50), I
decided to try BUYING some ads on FlyCast. I tried
making a targetted buy of certain sites (at $15 CPM)
and then I also tried making a "blind buy"
(untargetted full-network) at $1 CPM.
The result: while the targetted buy generated a
higher click-through ratio (2-3 percent vs. 0.5
percent for the blind buy), the "blind buy" at $1
CPM resulted in a MUCH lower "cost per click-through"
(about 23 cents instead of 50 cents to $2 per CT).
In my opinion, what this means is that the sites
should LOWER their prices for targetted buys (I
had already dropped my "minimum bid" rate from
$15 to $10 and now I have slid it down to $7 CPM).
(Note that my results are based on VERY small
sample sizes, and are probably not statistically
significant or strongly predictive of future results.)
I also noticed what I consider a precipitous drop
in CTR for first vs. second impressions to the same
visitor: my CTR overall was about 0.57% for first
impression, and about 0.35% for the second impression.
(I had configured the ad buy initially for a maximum
of two impressions, and now I've changed it to a
maximum of ONE impression per visitor.)
-- Mark J. Welch, http://www.ca-probate.com 510-462-8483
-- Banner Ads: http://www.markwelch.com/bannerad.htm
-- Web Counters and Trackers: http://www.markwelch.com/counter.htm
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