Study: Falling click rates in online advertising
The pointing finger is getting heavier: European surfers react on average to two out of every thousand banners they see. The overall European click rate in the first quarter of 2007 is 0.18 percent, the lowest it has ever been. These are the findings of a study published last Thursday by the German marketing company Adtech.
The pointing finger is getting heavier: European surfers react on average to two out of every thousand banners they see. The overall European click rate in the first quarter of 2007 is 0.18 percent, the lowest it has ever been. These are the findings of a study published last Thursday by the German marketing company Adtech.
"From our regular advertising analyses, we know that click rates develop cyclically. They collapse at the beginning of the year, but rise with the temperatures and remain stable until the end of the year," says Dirk Freytag, CEO of Adtech, interpreting the figures. The overall negative trend is nothing new; the average click-through rate in Europe is falling slightly year on year. "Users have become increasingly accustomed to online advertising," says Freytag, explaining the declining figures. New formats such as video ads are needed to generate attention and clicks. Layers and leaderboards, on the other hand, score with a high recall effect beyond the web.
There are clear differences in click behavior between the banner formats and the European countries. Most clicks are on video ads (4.6%) and pop-ups and layers (0.6%). Users click on the traditional full-size banner (0.2 percent) more frequently than large advertising spaces such as skyscrapers (0.11 and 0.15 percent) and leaderboards (0.12 percent). The most avid clickers in Europe are in France and Italy. Their click rates of 0.24 and 0.23 percent are twice as high as those of the Danes and Finns (0.1 percent each).
"From our regular advertising analyses, we know that click rates develop cyclically. They collapse at the beginning of the year, but rise with the temperatures and remain stable until the end of the year," says Dirk Freytag, CEO of Adtech, interpreting the figures. The overall negative trend is nothing new; the average click-through rate in Europe is falling slightly year on year. "Users have become increasingly accustomed to online advertising," says Freytag, explaining the declining figures. New formats such as video ads are needed to generate attention and clicks. Layers and leaderboards, on the other hand, score with a high recall effect beyond the web.
There are clear differences in click behavior between the banner formats and the European countries. Most clicks are on video ads (4.6%) and pop-ups and layers (0.6%). Users click on the traditional full-size banner (0.2 percent) more frequently than large advertising spaces such as skyscrapers (0.11 and 0.15 percent) and leaderboards (0.12 percent). The most avid clickers in Europe are in France and Italy. Their click rates of 0.24 and 0.23 percent are twice as high as those of the Danes and Finns (0.1 percent each).
