A eulogy for the click-through rate

I’m here to speak a little marketing heresy. The ubiquitous click-through rate, the longtime arbiter of the success or failure of online marketing efforts, is actually a pretty poor measurement tool – and seems to have outlived its usefulness.

Since the Internet emerged as a serious marketing medium, we have been bombarded with reports about click-through rates. We should, we are told, pay strict attention to them in order to quantify the effectiveness of our approach.

But as the Internet matures, more and more studies are showing that a high click-through rate isn’t necessarily a harbinger of great conversions to come.

Mobile analytics firm Amethon, for example, recently released a study focusing on sites that exist solely to host a specific advertising campaign.  CTR was high, but the target pages did not hold user’s attention for long, making for a high bounce

rate. While the campaigns could be considered successful based on click-throughs, they never engaged the user – and likely did not result in a significant income bump.

Still, a large number of online marketers continue to rely on this metric in the decision-making process – often ignoring other, more relevant metrics, such as brand awareness.

History seems to blame for the blinders. Since the click-through metric was the first to establish itself, online brand marketers have clung to it ferociously. It’s understandable, but relying solely on this outdated way of determining your campaign’s effectiveness isn’t the smart way to spend your budget.
In the world of direct response marketing, tangible measurements are the yardstick by which success is measured. Instead of merely paying attention to clicks and impressions, determine whether you’re on the right marketing path with hard numbers – leads generated, especially qualified leads.

Today’s consumer is being assaulted by marketing everywhere they turn – Web sites, television, movie theaters, even grocery store shopping carts. Simply catching someone’s eye enough to click your ad isn’t sufficient – especially when you consider that for many consumers, clicking could be more an action of habit than an indication of real interest. (Web surfers have notoriously short attention spans.)

The emergence of social media marketing has further muddied the waters. Studies by Forrester Research and Marketing Sherpa both show surprising amount of confusion about the space. The MS study points to the two factors that present the biggest barriers to entrepreneurs are a lack of knowledgeable staff (46 percent) and an inability to measure return on investment (43 percent).

If you’re exploring the space, it’s probably wise to find an expert who knows how to reliably track success before making the commitment.

Digital branding and branding specific metrics are becoming increasingly important to entrepreneurs as the Internet expands. System designers are working on robust and readily available analytic technologies to track these. In the coming years, look for these metrics to replace the narrow focus on click-through rates as a measure of marketing success.

It’s ironic, really… Just as click-throughs have declined since banner ads made their debut, their status as a reliable judge of marketing success is also beginning to recede.

Image by Davichi via Flickr.

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Tags: marketing

People: Jerry Buhlmann