The State of Display Advertising
- 90% of users don’t engage. In 2006 32% of internet users clicked on a display ad. By 2008 that number had dropped to 16%. Today less than 10% of internet users will click on any display ad during the year.
- The 85/8 Rule. 8% of all internet users account for 85% of all clicks.
- Engagement rates are in a rut. Despite ever larger ad units and ever more sophisticated targeting, for the past several years the click through rate of display advertising remains below 0.1%.
- The Navy Seal Rule. User engagement is so bad that you are actually 112 times more likely to sign up for, and complete, Navy Seal Training than you are to click on a banner ad.
- Billboards. Display advertising has becomes little more than an internet billboard that we rush by at 65 miles an hour on the way to our digital destination.
As Seth Godin so aptly put it:
Advertisers distract users. Users ignore advertisers.
Advertisers distract better. Users ignore better.
Clearly, users are winning. As study after study has shown, the fundamental problem is that users truly do ignore better. We have trained ourselves to ignore the billboards, and to only recognize the content we came to explore. As the heat map on the right shows, users’ eyes do not even scan over display ads. No amount of targeting can solve the issue of users, whether consciously or subconsciously, not even recognizing the existence of ads.
At Swoop we believe that the answer lies not in looking for new ways to measure the effectiveness of the billboards of the Internet but in finding creative ways to deliver value to users, to invite them to engage, and to delight them with relevant and meaningful marketing. We believe this invitation-driven engagement is the most valuable interaction a brand can have with a user. We believe it so much that we deliver only engagement-driven, pay-for-performance campaigns.