Re: what's a good click-through rate?

From: Randall Vlahos <rvv_at_smart.net>
Date: Mon, 7 Jun 1999 15:01:00 -0500 (CDT)

MEREDITH MILLER ASKED:
>>What is the average click-through rate for banners? ...

CLAUDIA BRUEMMER REPLIED:
>> In a recent ClickZ series on the nuts and bolts of online
>> advertising <http://www.searchz.com/Articles/0429992.shtml>
>> Michael Aaron said the current industry average is
>> speculated to be around .15 percent (according to
>> NetGravity, March).

MIKE V. COMMENTED:
>Banner ad sales are a joke. I don't see any advertiser
>benefiting from this type of medium. Just the people
>selling the banner space. Never before have consumers
>filtered out an advertising message so quickly and so
>easily.

First, I disagree:

I have an advertiser in a very specialized area of the
construction/restoration market doing targeted banners (by
keyword, page title) getting this kind of CTR. But the key
is SALES and ROI. This advertiser has received 3 SALES over
a 2 month period generating gross revenues in excess of
$100K - from a banner investment of $1000. I had to
reassure the publisher, who realized his CTR sucked ... that
our client was pleased as punch!

On the other hand, I agree:

because there is something worse than advertising specialty
products to a general audience: advertising specialty
products to the *wrong* special interest audience!

What I'm saying is that bonafide "mass media" and "general
(banner network) audiences" are very different animals.

The first catches a large diverse group with some common
interest, like a sports game, or television show, or world
news - however a banner network may string together a list
of very different, specialized web audiences, resulting in
an audience which is only "general" statistically - there
is a dynamic difference. For example:

When you run an car ad in on a news program, everyone
expects it, even if they're not in the market for a car.
When you run the same ad in a "fishing" website, it may
annoy, or even repel - because the audience is FOCUSED on
their interest - they want to see fishing info: editorials
and ads. (the exception might be a SUV, decked out for a
fishing trip)

My thesis (if you could call it one) is that mis-targeted
ads can be counterproductive, even damaging. And a lot of
that happens on the web.

RV

Vlahos Design
1567 Colonial Terrace, No. 105
Arlington, VA 22209

703 525 9329
703 525 3803 fax

rvv_at_smart.net
http://www.smart.net/~rvv/home.html

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Received on Mon Jun 07 1999 - 15:43:52 CDT