Why clicks are worth four times more
From attending Laredo Group's Interactive Sales Training (held monthly in New York City), we identified critical statistics for local media sales representatives to help local advertisers measure the real value of digital campaigns. The first statistic is a terrific sales tool: Visitors who see digital ad impressions actually go to the advertiser's sites as a result four times more often than the number of times they click on the banner. Most advertisers and sales representatives consider clicks as the standard way to measure response. However, post-impression and post-click activity (see image to the right) is much larger than clicks would indicate (Leslie Laredo considers clicks to simple be "impulse reactions to an impression). Why don't local reps and advertisers know this? The advanced back-tracking that looks at post-impression and post-click activity is only used by very large accounts. However, the study is out there, and advertisers who do not understand this statistic may be discounting 75% of activity to their site from banner ads. The chart to the right (please click to enlarge) shows that advertisers studied gained 80% of conversions (site visits) from banners ads from visitors who never clicked, but who found another interactive path from the impression to the advertiser's site, either through a search or typing a direct URL. Conducted by MediaMindResearch this study took place from 2009 to Q3, 2010. Measuring the immediate post-click and post-impression activity requires looking at analytics back-tracked from the advertiser's own web site - not the media site - which few small- and medium-sized businesses have the software (or impulse!) to do. Advertisers are typically focused on click-through-rates (CTR's). However, visitors who see the digital ad take a number of untracked actions, develop preferences and consider offers they may engage in down the road. It's hard to measure. But advertisers what like about the internet is the data. So click-through-rates (CTR's) will need to be addressed; even in a campaign in which the advertiser's main objective is branding, sooner or later they want to know the CTR to make sure "it's working." Best practice is to discuss the full range of conversion activities, and what the advertiser plans to measure it in advance. If the advertisers will be looking at CTR's (especially if the landing page is considered the key conversion mechanism), make sure they understand the value of the additional site traffic. (If the landing page has conversion tools, they may also want to link to that page from the home page of their site, to capture the additional visitors who are interested, but exploring, not clicking on ads). Laredo Group even suggests that understanding this behavior may mean more advertisers should think about placing their URL directly on the banner, formerly considered an unsophisticated advertising "no no." So how did MediaMindResesarch get this information? Large advertisers track not only clicks and calls, but also "view-throughs;" by putting a tag on their web site and using special software, large advertisers back-track through the extended pathways that visitors took to find the site (hence "view-throughs") and identify how many of these visitors originated on pages where banners or other digital ads were served. Asking small and medium-sized businesses to use advanced view-through software is not feasible (the last few steps of activity can be tracked through Dart's Spotlight, but the process is complicated, Laredo said). However, local advertisers may be discounting 80% of the activity from digital campaigns simply because they cannot "see" it. So in conclusion: When agreeing on measurable results with an advertiser, if clicks on the ad will be measured, be sure to include site visits at two to four times the number of clicks (if this study shows a metrics of four times click-throughs, then two times is more than a safe estimate of activity). Ask advertisers to check for spikes in search and site traffic when the campaigns are running. In the statistically-oriented digital world advertisers only see what they are looking for.
Many thanks to Leslie Laredo for sharing state-of-the-art expertise on digital selling with us. Laredo Group is currently training Cox Media Group major market selling teams, and conducts regular training sessions in-house in New York CIty. For information on training schedules go to Laredogroup.com.
Keywords
advertising, Laredo, click-through, statistics, sales training
