A recent study finds that 6% of Web users generate 50%
of the click-throughs. Worse news for advertisers: these clickers are
not representative of the population as a whole, most have incomes
under $40K, and their clicks are not related to any offline buying.
(They are mostly males between 25 and 44 years of age.) The number of
clicks on an ad campaign is also not strongly correlated with brand
awareness for the ads’ subject, according to the study.

Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting
network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore
collaborated on a research study whose results call into question
click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet
display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called “Natural Born
Clickers,” the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who
are not representative of the total U.S. online population is
accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior.

Full findings of the study, its methodology and results are being
presented this afternoon at the iMedia Brand Summit in Coconut Point,
Florida.

The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the
online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While
many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation
currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of
the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users
between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000.
Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet
user, and while they spend four times more time online than
non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very
heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to
visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly
different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation
between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection
between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad
for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that
when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high
click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.

“There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater
return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space
where the accountability data is so readily available,“ says Starcom
USA Director of Connections Research and Analytics Grant Prentice.
“Natural Born Clickers shows us that we can’t count on click-through
rate as our primary success metric for display ads; Starcom is more
reliant on shifts in brand attitude metrics and analytics tying on-line
exposure to sales as the true measures of online advertising efficacy.”

“While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct
response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click
performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of
brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president
at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is
what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary
benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can
be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while
simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not
be representative of the target audience.”

“One of the underlying values of looking at people and not just pages
in our business is that we are able to help uncover behavior that is
counterintuitive to what much of the media world assumes about online
audiences,” says Daniel Jaye, CEO of TACODA.

Via Starcom