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| Ken Mandel VP and MD Yahoo SE Asia |
Nicolas Zurstrassen Associate director of digital Nike |
Ross McNab Sales director of Asia Eyeblaster |
Kevin Huang CEO Pixel Media |
NO |
YES |
NO |
NO |
| “Clicks alone as a measurement of digital success have never mattered. Unfortunately, the industry became click-obsessed in the day when digital marketers everywhere were telling us how many clicks their campaigns achieved versus the actual advertising ROI. Clicks are an important part of the ROI equation but what happens after the click is also important - conversions. Did the clicking consumer engage with your microsite for nine minutes, download that application form, sign up for a test drive, subscribe to your newsletter or make an online purchase? As long as one remembers that digital advertising is a (conversion) journey where consumers move from that initial awareness-generating click to some sort of measurable action or activity, one can determine advertising ROI. I would argue that digital is the only medium where advertising can be direct-response and brand-building at the same time.” |
“Clicks are still one of the best indicators of the success of a campaign. A click signifies immediate interest in the offer - be it financial or emotional. For most brands, and in particular e-commerce brands, clicks are the fundamental baseline measurement. This is more so in China where third-party reports on impressions and exposure are non-existent or suspect. Therefore, results from reporting tools such as Omniture and Webtrends provide the best proxy for measuring the success of a campaign. However, as brands move away from a focus on destination sites and towards integrating themselves into the environments where their consumers interact, it is essential to layer another level of measurement on top of the click. The past few years have seen the rise of this new metric - engagement. At its simplest, this is the exposure model of traditional advertising - how many exposures of my brand has someone seen. The quality of the exposure is also ascertained by measuring the depth of user interactions - how long did they watch the video, did they comment on the article or did they forward it to a friend.” |
“Historically, online creative has been focused on a direct-response pull strategy - trying to drive traffic throur gh to a site. That strategy meant success could only be measured by counting clicks. But consumers are too savvy and the web far too interactive to gauge success solely by clicks. To do so is to ignore the web’s promise of providing true interactivity and complex brand engagement. Advancements in rich media allow advertisers to make the most of the media space they invest in. Rather than running standard banners with a vague hope that viewers will click-through for more content, advertisers have the unprecedented opportunity to engage their consumers directly and actively - to push content to consumers, rather than struggle to pull consumers away from their content. Brands looking to maximise their online engagement should look beyond clicks. By pushing content to consumers, they heighten the brand experience and give consumers the opportunity to interact without lifting a finger .” |
“Clicks have never mattered, never should have and hopefully never will. Clicks are merely a measure of how attractive a creative is and a variety of things can be done on a creative to initiate a click, which, at the end of the day, is meaningless. For direct-response marketers, the ultimate measure should be by desired response. We often hear from direct marketers that the most number of clicks could often be meaningless if they don’t convert to a sale. For brand marketers, we should look at user engagement (time spent, activities) with the brand’s ad. With rich media ads today, users need not click on the ad to get further information on a product, but the engagement by a user is extremely high. As a result, clicks can often be zero but time spent engaging with the brand via the ad is high and this is what matters most. As online advertising become more sophisticated, the measurement of a campaign by counting on clicks or by a click-through rate should be made obsolete.” |
Off the Fence... Do clicks on ads matter to marketers any more?
As online display advertising moves from direct response to brand-building, should marketers still be measuring ad performance by click-through rate?
