AdWonder Blog

Well, maybe not the death, but the move from the emphasis of the CTR to even beyond the ITR (interaction rate) in measuring engagement and advanced interactivity.

Cam Beck at ChaosScenario has a great post this morning (”Stop What You’re Doing and Read This“) about the ineffectiveness of display advertising as it relates to clickthrough rate urging marketers to stop using the once almighty CTR as a basis for success and begin utilizing the power of display advertising for brand exposure and awareness.

While, I agree with Cam’s take I believe — and have been witness to — display advertising can be used effectively for response driven campaigns. It really is all about knowing what you want to achieve and not losing sight of your goals (sorry to sound like an after school special). Most marketers get this concept as a whole, but sometimes this may be lost in their online initiatives.

If you are trying to get consumers to click through to your site to learn more/sign up/buy/whatever, it is a good idea to stay away from these techniques for failure:

• hide or be vague with the call to action (be clear about what you want the user to do and what they’ll get - Click Here to Print a $5 Coupon works better than just Click Here or Coupon)
• limit the clickable area to just a logo or just the call to action (not all users have laser accuracy with the mouse or are engaged by only the logo/CTA)
• offer loads of interactivity (why would I leave the banner with all this great stuff, tease the user with what they will experience on the site)

There are several more of these that seem like no-brainers and they are! But we have seen these can really be the tipping point for a good campaign to become a great campaign especially for the response driven initiatives where you are measuring conversion in alongside the clicks.

Of course, unleashing the power of rich interactive ads can do wonders for awareness focused projects. We’ve seen amazing results with synced ads and a trend over the last year where smart marketers are realizing the power “dualing” banners versus “dueling” banners.

Last night at the DFWIMA event Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer talked about how back in ‘96 everyone was discussing the importance of impressions and clicks. Even if he said that much of what we say today will be wrong tomorrow (only half jokingly), it’s great to see interaction is becoming a big piece of the equation for measuring success. I’ve seen how looking at the interaction rate and time spent on the page, relative to time before first interaction and total time of interaction can you paint a pretty solid picture of engagement through interactivity.

Cam talks about how most people are not in a sell me something mindset when they visit most publishing websites and the challenge to having users change their intentions of being on that particular page. I’ve talked about this before, but creating an positive ad environment for users is easy if you:

• Engage - don’t enrage
• Interact - don’t interrupt
• Reward - don’t renege

What these mean for your particular brand and campaign is where the fun comes in!

Cam and Geoff both talked about targeting the user, so the ads they see are relevant to them. Targeting, through whatever capacity, in conjunction with smart creative executions can prove to be wildly successful, as long as you know how you are measuring for success.

Just don’t say CTR.