Web Users Continue With Web 1.0 Habits
A lot can happen in a week. My sister is now married, I have improved my Wii Fit age from 45 to 25, and click-through rates are officially useless. Hang on, only one of those comes as a surprise…
There’s been a lot of debate about metrics, brand awareness and how your online business can make money ever since social media exploded all over your screen. Thing is, the proof that everything you know is wrong is only starting to become clear to others in recent months.
Therefore, it’s pretty difficult to not stop mid-surf and read any article with the eye-catching headline, “Only 16% of the Web Is Clicking Display Ads“. The fact that I’ll big up any article that induces a told you so response from me is entirely coincidental.
So which is a bigger waste of money – print or banner ads?
At least some people have realised that there’s more to a successful campaign than the click-through rate. Brand-site visitation is clearly the metric to keep firmly in mind at all times.
Especially when some people will still type the company name into their browser’s search bar (usually Google) even though it would be faster to type out the URL in the browser itself, which often they know anyway!
Due to user laziness, a successful ad may generate a website hit through an immediate search and I’m using the word search fairly loosely in this respect.
That in itself is worth noting, that a user will carry out an action even if it takes them an extra click to reach their destination as long as it’s a familiar route. Makes you wonder if the search bar should be the main focus in a browser and the URL bar itself could be relegated to ‘it’s there if you’re web 1.0 enough to type in the address‘ option.
Something else worth noting is that even if you don’t use ad-blocking software or plugins, Internet Explorer 8 does a good job of blocking out many banner ads. While I’d love to claim this information was gathered during painstaking research, it’s only something I’ve noticed while having my daily visit to Liverpoolfc.tv and is caused by normal(?) cookie privacy settings.
The moral of the story is simple, forget banner click-throughs unless you have a seriously compelling call to action and just make sure you give yourself a fighting chance when it comes to ad visiblity in the browser.
If it wasn’t for people time-wasting online during their work hours with the prehistoric IE6, I suspect those figures would be even lower.
