At the same time . you insist that display ads are not dead Aaron Orendorff: Exactly. So I get this number from Google DoubleClick data where they say . today . on average . in America . the click-through rate for a banner ad is just around . percent. So .
a few years ago . Solve Media took
that number and sort of crunched it in a really creative way and did a whole bunch of advertisements about . “You’re more likely to [fill in the blank] than ever click a display ad.” So they had things like the twins; you’re more likely to apply to Harvard and get accepted; win the mega-millions lottery; become a Navy SEAL; or my favorite: survive a plane crash.
Dan Levy: Wow. Aaron Orendorff: But the reality
is all recent numbers put the display ad net List of conduit cn Cell Phone Numbers works at a combined total of roughly $. billion worldwide . which is a staggering number . and it doesn’t necessarily mean that just because people are throwing money at it . it works. But . as I’m sure we’re gonna talk about a little bit later today .
there are some incredible ways to actually
up those click-through rates and rea Black Ops Cold War for Xbox lly get a huge return on the investment. Dan Levy: Right. So one of the reasons we hear people dismiss display ads is the idea that most web users these days are suffering from banner blindness. Is banner blindness a myth . or has it just been overstated Aaron Orendorff: It’s definitely not a myth.
One of the best studies you can look at is
by the Nielsen Norman Group . and it’s a very academic study. It’s a bit dated at this point . but if you just Google it . you can find it very easily. And they’ve got a ton of great visuals . some of which I included in the blog post that this was built on.
Recent data puts estimates roughly somewhere
around percent; that is . percent of web users suffer from banner blindness. They’re looking at the either center column or the left column or the right column and ignoring anything that’s on the sidebar. That’s the easiest way to think about it. So numbers like percent . the heat maps from eye-tracking software reveal really clearly that it’s absolutely not a myth .
and I don’t think it’s overstated. Dan
Levy: Great. Well . I wanna get into some of the ways that marketers could combat banner blindness. But . first . you say that one of the mistakes display advertisers make is that they only really pay attention to how many clicks their ads get.
So what else are they missing there Aaron Orendorff: Yeah. This is a great one . and I don’t think this is a noob mistake at all. We all sort of fall for the . you know . as soon as I launch something . I wanna know exactly how it’s performing .
and I’m chomping at the bit to look at the numbers as they pour in. And the easy stuff that we get access to is click-through rates and just conversions on the ads themselves. A couple things that I mention in the article is it’s really important to set up a Google funnel using Google Goals .
