The now widely publicized comScore study of US 'click trends' has been updated recently with new statistics based on data up to March 2009.

The 'Natural Born Clickers' study focused on how US internet users interact with online display advertisements. The new data shows that the number of internet users who click on display ads has fallen from 32% in July 2007 to only 16% in March 2009. This is probably from a mix of decreased expendable income and a public desensitizing to online advertising.

The most interesting aspect of the study, however, is the indication that a small core of internet users, only 8%, account for 85% of all advertising clicks.

The clear implication of this research is that display ad clicks are rapidly declining and so are their importance to marketing schemes.

"Today, marketers who attempt to optimize their advertising campaigns soley around the click are assigning no value to the 84% of internet users who don't click on an ad. That's precisely the wrong thing to do, because other comScore research has shown that non-clicked ads can also have a significant impact," says Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing and author of the study. So ultimately page views, rather than clicks, will be the determining factor in traffic monetization and site advertising.

The original research from July 2007 data segmented the 32% of internet users who clicked on at least one ad a month into heavy (accounting for 50% of all clicks) moderate (30%) and light (20%). Since then, the heavy clickers dropped from 6% of US internet users to 4%, moderate from 10% to 4%, and light from 16% to 8% according to the March 2009 data.

These results basically show that click-through rates are not accurate indicators for advertising evaluation, and that page views are more reliable. Obviously this is important for advertisers, but publishers can glean a lesson from this study. There could be a lot of untapped potential in mere views, and getting people to click on mouse-attracting headlines would prove to be a big boost to site traffic. Alternatively these results could mean that internet users are lazy, more content to see just what is in front of them rather than clicking through to find what they want.

Source: Starcom MediaVest Group