We’ve all heard the famous quote about advertising (forgive me for paraphrasing), “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
The digital advertising industry is working tirelessly to eliminate this uncertainty, using all means of technology to tell advertisers how much value they’re squeezing out of their budgets relative to their KPIs. For a long time, click-through rate (CTR) has been the go-to metric. It’s easily measurable and if one is not looking critically at it, they can say, “Someone actively clicked on the ad! They’re cruising down that path to purchase!” But recently, CTR has been exposed as a metric that is susceptible to fraud and which simply placates an advertiser looking for an easy way to measure “results,”.
Thanks to digital’s devotion to making metrics more meaningful in relation to a variety of advertiser KPIs, there are others out there that can tell a more robust success story than CTR.
Hover Time & Heat Mapping
Some ads are probably never going to be intentionally clicked on. You know it, I know it. But they build awareness, darnit. Measuring the time someone hovers on the ad, and even taking it a step further and generating a heat map to show where the user’s mouse spent the most time can illuminate the pieces of an ad that users connected with most, even subconsciously, regardless of whether they clicked through.
Interaction Rate & Time Spent
Interaction Rate is best when linked to executions where the advertiser is looking for engagement of some kind. It’s powerful in that it can tell the advertiser whether or not they have compelling ad creative, which can be hard to quantify (it can be explained away or ignored in favour of other issues when a digital campaign falters). I’ve seen ads for brands to which I’m utterly devoted with truly uninspired creative, so much so I’d even consider it off-brand. Conversely, a handsome creative, a clever call-to-action or an innovative high-impact execution can bring my attention (and interaction) to a brand that was never on my radar.
Interaction Rate also allows the advertiser to measure the quality of the interaction with an ad. A user may accidentally click on an ad once, but because multiple clicks within an ad unit can be tracked, for example clicking between pages, advertisers can get a sense of how long (Time Spent) a user clicked around an ad and what part of their creative vision or offering most connected.
These are just a few of the metrics available that tell an advertiser a more useful story than CTR. What advertisers must do to truly get the most bang-for-their-buck is to have a clear idea of their campaign goals and choose metrics that will give the most in-depth look at whether they were achieved.
Laura Moore, Manager of Sales Solutions, Olive Media
Harry says: For Paid Media, any metric that does not take into account the cost of that media should be ignored, ESPECIALLY CTR. There is a cost to all Paid Media of course, so when optimizing or analyzing any Paid Media campaign only cost-per-metrics should be employed. Such as CPC (for ALL click goal campaigns), CPA (for conversion goals), CPE (for engagement goals). CTR & CPC are usually not positively co-related, so to optimize to CTR for a click goal campaign will actually lead to fewer overall clicks, and in some cases dramatically fewer.
Tuesday, June 23 @ 1:22 pm |