Aug
28
2009

The Next Measure

Few things get me more excited about advertising than being able to see the results of it. It is a thrill that comes from pulling up stats and seeing a spike in phone calls, site traffic and sales after a campaign has launched. It makes you feel like you did a good job-like you managed to do the right thing in a world of ever changing options.

In a recent report, Eyeblaster has set out to create a new measure for online ads to help aid us in achieving that thrill. This new stat called a dwell time, measures intentional engagement within an ad. [Eyeblaster has defined "intentional" as anything longer than a second. Any time less than a second was discarded from the test.] The more detailed definition of dwell time depends on the type of ad being used. For an expandable ad, it would measure how long it was expanded. For a video, it would measure how long the video played, etc. They have even figured out a way to track the duration of customized interactions.

So how does this compare to the stats we already know and love/hate? In 2008, the average CTR for a rich media ad was .35%. But the average dwell rate was 8.71%.  A dwell rate is the cumulative user interactions with the ad divided by the total served impressions. This tells us our ads are getting much more interaction than we’ve previously been able to tell our clients. In the future, it will be great to report that an ad received 12 clicks and on average consumers spent 55 seconds with it. Those seconds are very valuable in my mind. A click can be accidental (gasp!), but 55 seconds on an ad indicates pure intention.

What I like about this new measure is that it takes us beyond the click. It takes into account that people are 25 times more likely to interact with an ad than click it. This just takes us one step closer to seeing into the consumer’s mind!

Other good things to know about what this new measure has taught Eyeblaster:

• The use of video almost doubles dwell time- 71.51 seconds for video vs 37.7 seconds on non video.
• The highest on average dwell time was found to be the mail category at 84.24 seconds, while the highest dwell rate was found in news at a little over 8%.
• When they do spend time, consumers spend close to a full minute of active engagement.