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There are difficult to measure how effective an ad is, but one advantage of the internet is that almost all behaviour of the user can be measured. There are several of different ways to measure the effectiveness of a banner ad.
(Lindstrøm and Andersen, 2001, p246)
“A click-through is the action of clicking a hyperlink, such as a banner ad, and reaching a new web page. Internet advertisers pay sites hosting their ads based on the number of click-troughs.�? (http://www.advertopedia.com/click-through.htm)
Click trough rate has a long time been one of the most commonly used methods of measuring advertising effectiveness. The advertising industry has click trough rates been commonly used as billing method, the advertisers needed to pay for each click the banner got (Cox and Koelzer, 2004, p 181). According to Kahle (2001, p.25) the click through rate measures an action by the internet users, where the user accepts to leave the site he was browsing to get in the announcer’s website either to collect extra information or to conclude a transaction. Click trough rate is not the only measure of banner effectiveness. The click expresses only an extremely short-term effect since people can be interested in the claim but defer the visit until completion of their current browsing (Kahle, 2001, p.25) Click-trough rate has been recently seen as a rather poor way to measure advertising effectiveness. (Shields, 2005) Mr Young-Bean Song (Shields, 2005) the director of analytics at the Atlas Institute says he is amazed that people still relay on basic impressions and click trough rates to measure banner ad effectivness.
The reason that cost per click has been disappeared lately is that the big companies see online branding as more important than just click trough rates. The online adverting industry are moving away from quick direct sell advertising to more brand building messages. This can be seen by the big total growth in online brand advertisement by leading big brands such as; Coca Cola, Nike and Visa. (Lacy, 2005) The change in online advertising has been followed with change in technology from static banner ads to rich media ads, this has made it easier for the big companies to make messages that build the brand image.
Rowley (2004) states that possible objectives for online branding might be:
To measure this new brand objectives standard advertising effectivness measures like recall and recognition needs to be used. A study by Hussherr and Dreze (2003, p14) found that traditional memory based effectivness mesures such as ad recall and recognition provided a valuable insight into the online advertising effectivness.
Shields, M. (2005) �?As marketers spend more ad dollars online, new tools may help to answer: Is the Internet really the most measurable of all media?,�? Brandweek vol. 46, no 23, pp. 32-35.
Lacy, Sarah, �?On the Web, Branding Is Back,�? Business Week Online,
Hussherr Francois-Xavier and Dreze X., (2003) �?Internet advertising: Is anybody watching?,�? Journal of Interactive Marketing; vol. 17, no 4, pp 8-24.
Cox, B. and Koelzer, W. (2004) Internet marketing, Upper Saddle River, N.J. : Pearson/Prentice Hal.
Rowley, J. (2004) �?Online Branding,�? Online Information Review vol 28, no 2, pg131
Jorgen Ingwersen 15:00, 27 Oct 2005 (EST)
