Oriol Gifra

In a recent study of Active View data by Google, was found that 56.1% of all ads served were not measured viewable. Yet, the average publisher’s viewability is 50.2%. This means a small number of publishers are serving the majority of non-viewable impressions and dragging down the served impression viewability average by almost 6%.

Google released an infographic, “Five Factors of Viewability,” showing that “many display ads that are served never actually have the opportunity to be seen by a user.”

A display ad is considered viewable when 50% of an ad’s pixels are in view on the screen for a minimum of one second as defined by Media Rating Council.

The most viewable position is right above the fold, not at the top of the page.

The most viewable ad sizes are vertical units. Not a surprise, since they stay on screen longer as users move around a page.

But all those rates are not surprising to me. Since more than 4 years stats are demonstrating more and more that Display Ads for most advertisers simply don’t work, because if you are trying to engage users, they simply ignore that type of pushing messages.

Let me give you some more stats:

The average banner ad has a 0.1% clickthrough rate (CTR), and the standard 468×60 banner has a 0.04% CTR.

Some more articles:

1. You are more likely to complete NAVY SEAL training than click a banner ad. (Source:Solve Media)
   
2. Only 8% of internet users account for 85% of clicks on display ads (and some of them aren’t even humans!). (Source: comScore)
   
3. You are more likely to get a full house while playing poker than click on a banner ad.(Source: Solve Media)
   
4. The average person is served over 1,700 banner ads per month. Do you remember any?(Source: comScore)
   
5. You are more likely to summit Mount Everest than click a banner ad. (Source: Solve Media)
   
6. The average clickthrough rate of display ads is 0.1%. (Source: DoubleClick)
   
7. You are more likely to birth twins than click a banner ad. (Source: Solve Media)
   
8. About 50% of clicks on mobile ads are accidental. (Source: GoldSpot Media)
   
9. You are more likely to get into MIT than click a banner ad. (Source: Solve Media)
   
10. You are more likely to survive a plane crash than click on a banner ad. (Source: Solve Media)
    

These stats were curated from this article from Hubspot

Again, I confirm the future is the relationship marketing. Only permission based one to one brand-consumer-brand conversations and relations are (as always have been) really effective.

Let’s adapt old effective relationship marketing techniques to online environment. Don’t push me because you don’t see me!. Treat me please as we were having a coffee and you (brand) was explaining me a story, an add value conversation, those interesting conversations that make me think that (brand) is interesting to me because is offering me something valuable.

Would you like someone to be shouting you when is suposed to persuade you? That’s for me Display, event retargeted one, what I consider invasive.

Advertising agencies I suggest you to start working on the new era of relationship marketing where keywords like Big Data, CRM, e-mail marketing permission, Social Media… should work better and be much more effective than Display.

Someone can tell me.. well, Display can be useful for awareness campaigns… yes, may be for that, but the problem remains the same… people is not even watching to that ads. I count 3,2,1… to skip the Youtube teaser ad. Don’t you?

Let’s be smarter, Now we have much more data than never. Use it with the correct tools, moment and objectives. It seems Display is not really the tool, moment nor useful for many advertisers objectives.