6% of Web Users Generate 50% of Ad Clicks

pcause writes "A recent study finds that 6% of Web users generate 50% of the click-throughs. Worse news for advertisers: these clickers are not representative of the population as a whole, most have incomes under $40K, and their clicks are not related to any offline buying. (They are mostly males between 25 and 44 years of age.) The number of clicks on an ad campaign is also not strongly correlated with brand awareness for the ads' subject, according to the study. This is bad news for ad-supported Web sites and businesses, as rates should drop if the Net economy begins to take these findings seriously."

Comments

Rates or targets?

[Telvin_3d]

The only online advertising that this will hurt are the mass spam adds. Anything being targeted at a specific demographic can be easily and verifiably checked. As an example, anyone who runs adds on a site like Penny-Arcade can be quite sure that any click throughs are exactly the type of people they want to reach. Click throughs from adds run on Slashdot? They know the type of people doing the clicks. Random Click-here-for-hyped-product-of-the-moment? Not so much.

Personally, I think this is a good sign. Adds targeting specific audiences and communities tend to be more respectful and interesting. If these findings promote that kind of advertising instead of flashing spams adds designed to distract, then hooray!

Re:No Money

[sayfawa]

Just an anecdote using myself as an example. When I am in a situation where I'm pretty poor, living from check to check, I find myself not even trying to save money as much. It's like a downward spiral, possibly brought on by a feeling of hopelessness about my economic situation. As if I figure: "why bother pinching pennies when the end result is still poverty?".

On the other hand, when I'm doing better economically I find myself becoming thrifty. As soon as I see that money piling up in the bank I want to see how much more I can save.

Thankfully, I'm in the latter state right now, and I find myself cooking a lot more (as opposed to eating out) and buying less unnecessary items like beer and snacks.

But maybe I'm just weird.

Re:No Money

[mattdev121]

I'd say that poor impulse control certainly does = low income. If you extend impulse to hastily-made decisions such as "screw 4 more years at school, I can make $16/hour if I start work RIGHT NOW!", which may sound higher than some entry-level college student jobs, but they stay $16/hour until you retire, unlike more professional jobs. From this perspective, those who are unable to strongly hold out, plan, and think rationally, end up with low income jobs.

We still compare Apples to Apples

[RexDevious]

Of course people who click on ads are atypical. We know that already, and it's been statistically neutralized out of the equation.

There are only 2 goals for an ad, brand awareness, or profit.

I don't need to tell you about brand awareness, you've all seen ads that we're on the internet before, and can figure out why they're there.

For profit ones just break it down into ROI. You don't *want* everyone clicking on your ad. That's why you hear a lot more about "click-fraud" than "impression fraud" when you're in internet advertising.

The original article seems like it was written by people using very out dated methods of media buying. I don't know anyone who evaluates ads based solely on "clicks" for the same reason I don't know know anyone who evaluates websites based on "hits" anymore.

Sure, we still look at Cost per Click; because that ties back into brand awareness values to some extent, but the real vector is Cost per *Conversion*; what did we pay per *customer*. Ya figure out how much a customer is worth, you know how effective your ads are.

But internet advertising is still relatively new. It has a long way to go catch up to even Direct Mail in many cases. And as long as it's still profitable to do it clumsily, you'll see it done clumsily.

Which is also the reason that women see ads for Viagra, and men see ads for Oprah's book club.