One Red Hot Country Mama!

I have been doing research for a client on display advertising (some may still know it as banner advertising but really that name represents only one size) lately, and was surprised by some of the findings. Here is some stuff I wanted to share publicly:

- The typical clickthrough rate is between 0.1-0.3%. Clickthroughs on display advertising has been going down since the beginning of the internet (In the 90s people clicked on banners out of curiosity, now people are less enthusiastic).   

- Display advertising accounted for 22% of the US Internet Advertising revenue in 2006. This is well below the 56% market share it had in 1999 before search marketing came along.

- More targeted ads get a higher clickthrough, at about 0.5%

- Video ads increase clickthrough to 0.4% (doubling from the typical 0.2%) .

- Behavioral and demographic targeting also increase clickthrough rate to up to 1.5% .

I got these results from both public resources and by phoning a dozen or so sites and ad networks. I am very surprised how low the clickthroughs are on display advertising – just another reason to stick with search marketing.