Half of all mobile ad-clicks made redundant by fraud, faulty metrics and low network speeds
A new mobile ad market study conducted by S4M has concluded that half of all ad-clicks are redundant, throwing into doubt one of the primary means of measuring and optimising campaigns.
The study looked at campaigns conducted throughout Europe, Asia and the US in May 2014, taking in over 1bn ad impressions taking in tablets, iOS only and mixed mobile devices. This showed that the tablet market fared slightly better with just 35 per cent of clicks going AWOL whilst iOS only campaigns registered a 40 per cent drop off.
Digging into the reason behind these ‘alarming’ figures S4M cited three possible explanations; including ‘fat finger syndrome’ when users simply struggle with the small screen to slow network speeds for those browsing whilst on the move.
Another suggested reason is that of click fraud where ads are activated by automated bots and counted as clocks, even though no arrival is registered.
Christophe Collet, founder and CEO at S4M said: “Spending budget on clicks that never arrive is budget wasted. Every point in the consumer journey needs to be analysed to provide a clear picture of campaign performance to enable real optimisation. Whilst the visit-through rate is one example of this, other metrics such as actual app installs, or repeat users for example, will help media buyers and planners pin optimisation to metrics that illustrate the lifecycle of a user and the real ROI of a mobile ad campaign.”