The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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What are we really paying for online?

By Mathias Plank |

November 27, 2012 | 4 min read

Mathias Plank, CEO and founder of EyeTrackShop, discusses online display advertising.

EyeTrackShop's Mathias Plank

It may be drastic to call it a conscious scam or gigantic cover up, but it’s getting increasingly obvious that there is something fundamentally wrong with how online display advertising currently is being priced and delivered.

Extensive studies from ComScore show that more than one third of all ad impressions are money down the drain as they are never seen – by anyone! Other research shows even more disappointing figures and according to EyeTrackShop, which uses an eye tracking methodology to audit online ads globally, 50 per cent of all display ads are never seen.

No wonder there is a growing and justified concern amongst marketers and media agencies. 30 - 50 per cent of the investment on digital communication is a clear waste, but there is no way of controlling which. Ads on sites with a cluttered environment (there are examples of sites where you can find up to 15 ads on a single page!) have a hard time attracting attention which makes it awfully hard to get a message through. And a vast array of ad inventory is placed so that is practically impossible for anyone to see it. In a recent blog post, head of digital for Bonnier Tidskrifter, Peder Bonnier, recently compared buying online campaigns to “buying an outdoor campaign where at least a third of the billboards are placed at the bottom of the sea”. In the same post Mr Bonnier also said that publishers, media agencies, creative agencies, and clients are all part of the faulty development of the web as an advertising medium and therefore all must be a part of a new solution .

Brand advertisers care about getting their target groups to see the ads, in order to raise brand awareness, increase brand favorability and drive purchase intent. They don’t care about clicks, or exposure-less impressions. What is more, they know that the “See-Say-Gap” caused by respondents’ post-rationalisation of their true behavior, is deeply problematic. Through modern research the malleability of memory is becoming increasingly clear and when we know we cannot rely on our memories maybe we should start to question the validity of traditional post testing.

Look at this for example: in a recent study by EyeTrackShop, respondents were invited to browse a couple of sites, and afterwards asked which ads they remembered having seen. 21 per cent recalled one portion of the ads (the less known brands) on average - but 70 per cent had actually laid eyes on these ads for a few seconds. Other ads (better known brands) were claimed as being recalled by 40 per cent of the respondents - but when cross analyzed with eye tracking data, it was found that some 80 per cent of the sample actually never looked at these ads.

It is hard to know when the recall data from quantitive studies are inflated or deflated. And still, it is survey question studies, and technical measurements on clicks, impressions and viewability, that are supposed to guide investments in display ads.

The increasing concerns for efficient media spending online are justified, and need to be taken seriously. There is no simple proxy for visibility. But then again, there does not need to be, we can measure it directly.

The goal for agency media buyers and brands will to be to ensure that brand advertisers have a solution to the fact that 30-50% of ads online are just a complete waste of money.

EyeTrackShop is launching realCPM, an eyetracking auditing methodology for brands and agencies, @EyeTrackShop_UK

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