"Natural Born Clickers": Heavy clickers kill click-through rate

 The click as the primary measure of the efficiency of brand building campaigns is dead. This is the conclusion of a joint study by the media agency Starcom, the behavioral targeting network Tacoda and the web researcher Comscore. The study, called "Natural Born Clickers", concludes that a very small number of users are responsible for the majority of clicks in the USA: half of all recorded clicks on image advertising units come from a small group of "atypical" users. These just six percent of all users spend a total of four times more time online than the average. During this time, according to the study, these permanent clickers, who are between 25 and 44 years old and tend to come from low-income households, click on everything that comes their way. Because these "heavy clickers" are not representative of the general public, the use of the click rate as a trading currency in Internet advertising is not suitable. In addition, Starcom's data showed no correlation between the branding effect of image ads and the number of clicks, as reported by Netzwoche.
However, the authors of the study do not want to do away with the click rate altogether. The click can still serve as a relevant measure for direct response advertising campaigns, according to Erin Hunter from Comscore. However, the study makes it clear that the click-through rate is the wrong measure for the efficiency of a campaign for brand building.