At some point, brands stopped focusing on CTR’s (
Click-Through Rates) for their banner campaigns. Why?
The numbers were embarrassingly low. Not to say that awareness isn’t an effective use of display. It very much is. But when it comes pure CTR’s somehow folks are still trying to make those #’s sound good:
Usually its something like this:
Buyer: The banners performed 2X better than expected!!
Brand Manager: That sounds good. Is that good?
B: It is spectacular. We expected a CTR of .0002 percent and you achieved .0004. That is a 100% increase. 100%! Holy god of CTR’s! Imagine if you had a 100% chance of winning the lottery. You’d win right?!?
BM: The lottery?
B: Yes. You would be a flippin’ millionaire.
BM: (Blank Stares.)
B: And, by doubling your expected CTR’s you are a virtual millionaire.
BM: How many people clicked through?
B: Over 12-14 people.
BM: That doesn’t even make sense.
B: I know. I can’t believe it either. 100%!!!
I’ve seen that meeting. I swear. Now, brand managers can dust off the ole’ CTR measure but only if they are producing content in social media that can be disseminated by the consumer. So, if your brand makes it to the WALL of a consumer on Facebook – your brand will enjoy much higher CTR’s and overall awareness measures.
AdWeek writes that a startup called Vitrue has developed an innovative algorithm for measuring CTR’s in social media. Because social media audiences log in at different times you cannot anticipate that every friend in your list sees every item in your wall posts. Vitrue estimates that at any moment about 1/12th of Facebookers are online. Using those measures, CTR’s from wall postings might be measured without the need for decimal points and media buyer smoke and mirrors.
And we’re excited to see companies like Vitrue cracking the code to help us prove that CTR’s can be measured before the decimal and not after.
Keep in mind that wall posts with content that the consumer is not asking for (Like your tag line, your slogan, your logo large and spinning) won’t even make it to the wall in the first place. If you give the consumer value, information or entertainment they will carry your brand torch.
Continue to scream at the consumer with a megaphone and eventually they will put in earplugs.
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