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What would you do if clicks weren't the ultimate measure of an ad's effectiveness?

by tomcam
5 replies
We know that in many cases CPV (for novices, that's cost per view, or paying simply for people--one hopes--to look at your ads regardless of what actions they take) is not a great return and it's easy for ad networks to fake.

Currently the gold standard for advertising is paying for people to take action--clicking on an ad (that's CPC, or cost per click, if you're new to all this), a method so easy to game it has its own term of art, click fraud. All old hat, I know.

What if there were a more effective way to measure customer intent? There might be. MarketingVox published the results of a study by comScore and the "Minority Report"-sounding PreTarget where they measured "dwell" time, or how long people hover their mouse over the ad. (Really? They couldn't just call it hover time?")

There's lots of info packed into the short article at Research: Do We Need A "Pay-per-Hover" Ad Model?, not least of which is another surprise: this has already been studied and confirmed once before, in July 2010.

Is that enough for you to consider changing your tactics in any way?
#clicks #cpc #cpv #dwell time #effectiveness #hover time #measure #ultimate
  • Profile picture of the author David Keith
    the real truth is that PPV has almost an entirely different goal for most people/companies that use that and understand it.

    PPC or PPL(lead) and those things that track action are really direct marketing designed to have an initial ROI near or above the cost of the advertising.

    PPV on the other hand is more of a branding type of advertising. Direct marketers don't usually focus on pure branding tactics that use PPV style of advertising.

    Of course there are crossovers, but in general PPV is for exposure and branding...not directly driving sales from the ad.

    The thing with "branding advertising" is that it is nearly impossible to track how much branding affect it had.

    This seems like an attempt to turn the usually less expensive branding / exposure style of advertising into the generally more expensive (per person reached) direct marketing type of ads.
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  • Profile picture of the author Warrior X
    Interesting way to look at it- but who says clicks are the ultimate measure of an ad?

    If one of my ads got 1,000 click and no sales, the effectiveness of that ad is zero in my book.

    So it's more about what type of traffic is clicking on the ad, and how likely they are to buy (conversion rate in other words.)
    --Jeremy
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    • Profile picture of the author David Keith
      Originally Posted by TrustedCopy View Post

      Interesting way to look at it- but who says clicks are the ultimate measure of an ad?

      If one of my ads got 1,000 click and no sales, the effectiveness of that ad is zero in my book.

      So it's more about what type of traffic is clicking on the ad, and how likely they are to buy (conversion rate in other words.)
      --Jeremy
      Thats the perfect example of a direct marketers mindset. Nothing wrong with that by the way, but direct sales are not the only way to measure an ads effectiveness.

      how many people buy a specific car due to a tv ad? Those ads are for branding an exposure. Not to make you instantly get up off your couch, run to the dealership and buy the car they just showed you.
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      • Profile picture of the author Warrior X
        Originally Posted by David Keith View Post

        Thats the perfect example of a direct marketers mindset. Nothing wrong with that by the way, but direct sales are not the only way to measure an ads effectiveness.

        how many people buy a specific car due to a tv ad? Those ads are for branding an exposure. Not to make you instantly get up off your couch, run to the dealership and buy the car they just showed you.
        Well in the spirit of friendly debate...

        I would say we're all direct marketers here.

        For any small business to approach advertising like a large public company does, I think is a big mistake.

        Unless you have an enormous advertising budget, the first, second and third things you should be worried about are making the sale (any branding should be a by-product.)

        --Jeremy
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        • Profile picture of the author David Keith
          Originally Posted by TrustedCopy View Post

          Well in the spirit of friendly debate...

          I would say we're all direct marketers here.

          For any small business to approach advertising like a large public company does, I think is a big mistake.

          Unless you have an enormous advertising budget, the first, second and third things you should be worried about are making the sale (any branding should be a by-product.)

          --Jeremy
          There are probably more people here who run much larger businesses than you realize.

          Also, branding does not necessarily mean "to all consumers" similar to Nike or Apple.

          There are a number of relativity small companies that attempt to achieve some degree of branding within a smallish group or industry.

          I am good pretty good friends with the owner of HG. I remember when they were nothing. They got big via a combination of direct marketing (affiliate program) and brand marketing via media buys. Their branding campaign was started with about $250 in ads...lol. Their brand marketing played a big part in launching and making their direct marketing efforts work until it got the point where it was self sustaining.
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