The Connected Web

Who clicks on banner ads? I certainly don't — except by accident (especially prevalent on the iPhone, I find, when I use some white space to scroll down the page and find I've inadvertently clicked an ad whose image hasn't yet downloaded).

New research shows I'm part of the overwhelming majority of non-clickers — 84 percent of all Internet users never click on a display ad in a month, according to an analysis of comScore data from March 2009. That proportion has risen significantly since the last such survey, in July 2007, when a third of Internet users were still clicking on ads. Even worse news for advertisers: just eight percent of Internet users comprise 85 percent of all display clicks.

So why bother spending on display ads? It turns out that Internet users take note of what the ads say, even if they don't bother to click through. Another comScore report in June found that a fifth of consumers search on brands they see advertised in banner ads, and a third of them visit the advertiser's site, reports Internetnews.com, adding:

"Furthermore, that report said online shoppers exposed to display ads spent over 50 percent more time than the average visitors had at these sites and viewed more pages. It also says users spent 10 percent more money online overall, and more on product categories related to the advertised brands."

Are we back to the classic John Wanamaker advertising formula that says, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."? I have to confess that I even refrain from clicking on search ads, preferring to search on my own terms for the company or product mentioned. Though I do probably click on a few search ads in a month (only when searching, though — never once from my Gmail inbox in what's now more than a year of intensive use).

From my perspective, there's got to be a better way:

"In the Web era, marketing has got to move beyond the intrusive megaphone of advertising and use the enormous computing capacity of the Web to develop much more subtle methods of matching propositions to people at exactly the right time, price and place ... not by hosting ads, but by hosting applications that bring buyers and sellers closer together."

I think what this research is showing is that advertising of any kind only really works well at raising awareness of a product or brand. It has a role to play, but only a small one. If you really want people to buy at the point of need, you need to focus on other mechanisms. Using advertising as your primary method of sales conversion on the Web is to apply a broadcast mechanism to an intensely interactive environment. Why not use the computing power and reach of the Web to interact directly with prospects instead?