More Trouble for the Click-Through

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007321

OCTOBER 9, 2009

A metric in decline

Researchers that question the value of the click as a metric of advertising success can add another datapoint to their arguments.

comScore and Starcom USA have followed up a July 2007 study conducted with Tacoda that segments Internet users into heavy, moderate and light clickers and found that a decreasing percentage of users are making up an increasing portion of all click-throughs.

Heavy clickers only accounted for 4% of all Internet users in March 2009, but they were responsible for more than two-thirds of click-throughs that month. Both moderate and light clickers decreased in number and in share of clicks.

What’s more, nonclickers rose as a proportion of all Internet users by 16 percentage points. With just 16% of Web users clicking on ads in March, how informative are click-through rates?

“A click means nothing, earns no revenue and creates no brand equity. Your online advertising has some goal—and it’s certainly not to generate clicks,” said John Lowell, Starcom USA SVP and director, research and analytics, in a statement.

Marketers and researchers have suggested other metrics, such as the view-through rate, gross ratings points (GRPs) and dwell time as more appropriate gauges of success.

“It’s not the right metric,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni of the click in a May 2009 interview with eMarketer. “It’s a really short-term view of how advertising works as a direct-response-oriented vehicle and not a branding-oriented one.”