Press Releases
DOUBLECLICK Q2 AD SERVING TREND DATA AND CONTINENTAL AIRLINES STUDY DEMONSTRATE SIGNIFICANCE OF POST-IMPRESSION METRICS IN ONLINE ADVERTISING
Quarterly Report Shows Context is Still Most Common Form of Targeting
New York, NY, 7/26/2004 – DoubleClick Inc. (NASDAQ: DCLK), the leading provider of marketing technology, today released two separate reports which both substantiate the impact over time of online advertising. In its Q2 2004 Ad Serving Trend Report, DoubleClick reveals that post-impression impact of online advertising still far outweighs post-click impact. In a complementary study with Continental Airlines, also released today, DoubleClick demonstrates that a portion of conversions over a 30 day period can be attributed to online advertising, introducing the concept of “In-direct Response.” The key takeaway from both reports is that online advertising can and should be measured both by immediate response (click-through) and response over time (view-through).
Second Quarter Ad Serving Trends
Overall Click Rates Stable; Large Ad Size Adoption Continues to Grow Average click-through rates for all ads served by both advertisers and publishers were stable Q1 to Q2 at 0.56% but this was a decline of 9% year over year. In terms of ad sizes used, leaderboards continue to challenge the banner, growing 384% year over year. For a breakdown of all ad sizes, please refer to the full Q2 Ad Serving Trend Report at xwww.doubleclick.net.
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Rich Media Grows 34% Year over Year
Rich media increased 34% from Q2 of 2003 to over 42% (42.7%) of all ads served in Q2 of 2004. Growth was flat Q2 over Q1, however, which could indicate a maturing of the market for rich media or perhaps a seasonal effect.
Trends in Targeting – Beyond Context, Little Used
DoubleClick’s Q2 Ad Serving Trend Report also shows that the primary way that ads online are currently targeted is by context. Of all ads served by publishers (where most all of the targeting is done) 53.4% are targeted by keyword/key value, which is the term for how a publisher tags a page so that ads can be contextually served to it. Keyword/key value targeting has long been a popular feature of DoubleClick’s DART for Publishers, allowing web publishers to offer sophisticated consumer segmentation for advertisers. The highly-developed segmentation tool makes DoubleClick a leader in delivering targeted ads within relevant content, generating click-through rates up to 40% higher that the industry standard.
Technological forms of targeting, such as by browser type, time of day, ISP, domain or operating system targeting all account for less than 2% of all publisher served ads. While usage of geo-targeting has gone down online over the past year (7.4% of all publisher inventory in Q2 ’03 to 1.8% in Q2 ’04) geo-targeting is improving and represents an untapped opportunity. Since Q1 of ’04, DoubleClick has appended its data with information from Digital Envoy, a company that has a patented process for mapping IP addresses and offers statistically significant confidence levels in the accuracy of their targeting down to the US Zip Code level.
Post-Impression and View-throughs versus Click-throughs
The Q2 Ad Serving Trend Report showed that post-impression activity rates (actions taken after viewing but not clicking on an ad) are typically higher than click-through rates. In Q2, the average click-through rate for ads served by advertisers was 0.43% as compared to an average view-through rate of 0.73%. According to the subset of ads served by advertisers that tracked response through to online conversion, in Q2 more than six times the number of conversions resulted from view-through rather than click-through activity (42.5 conversions per post impression activity versus 6.6 conversions per post-click activity).
While DoubleClick has been reporting on view-through rates for some time, the challenge is that view-through metrics could also capture activity that occurs as the result of someone responding to an offline ad or simply knowing the company brand and going to that company’s website. The related DoubleClick/Continental study takes the view-through concept and uses a control vs. exposed methodology to determine exactly what portion of the view-through rate is directly attributable to the online advertising.
In-direct Response: Results of Continental Study
As part of the study, individuals were exposed to either test or control ads during a February 2004 Continental Airlines online media campaign. View-through activity was tracked for sales and registrations occurring 1 hour, 1 day, 7 days, 14 days and 30 days after exposure.
Over the course of the 30-day period, 67.5% of the view-through registrations and sales overall were attributable to online creative. Significantly, the impact of delayed response on email registrations decreased by 50% after one day, while the impact on sales transactions increased by 3% during the same period. The difference between these two events is most likely due to the fact that there is a longer decision process when in comes to making airline ticket purchases.
Impressions volume and site/placement were identified as significant factors in in-direct response to online advertising, with impressions being the most significant factor. For the full study, please visit xwww.doubleclick.net.
Colleen Aranda, Manager of Interactive Marketing, Continental Airlines said, “The in-direct response study we did with DoubleClick proves to us what we have long believed – that the impact of online advertising pays dividends over time. The view-through is a significant and real metric for measuring campaign performance, and we’re thrilled with the results both of our ad campaign and the associated in-direct response study.”
“Both DoubleClick’s second quarter ad serving data, and the study with Continental Airlines, confirm the idea that online advertising, just like advertising in all other media, has both direct and in-direct response potential,” said Doug Knopper, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Ad Management, at DoubleClick. “As advertisers start to take greater advantage of online advertising solutions at their disposal, like advanced targeting or high-impact rich media, we should only see even stronger performance from the medium.”
About DoubleClick Inc.
DoubleClick is the leading provider of solutions for advertising agencies, marketers and web publishers to plan, execute and analyze their marketing programs. DoubleClick’s marketing solutions – – online advertising, search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing, database marketing, data management and marketing resource management — help clients yield the highest return on their marketing dollar. In addition, the company’s marketing analytics tools help clients measure performance within and across channels. DoubleClick Inc. has global headquarters in New York City and maintains 22 offices around the world.