Less Is More In Web Advertising.

Nielsen//NetRatings and NetRatings revealed that among online advertisers, high-tech companies have been more successful in their online advertising strategy than digital economy and traditional companies. The latest findings from Nielsen//NetRatings’ AdSpectrum service found that a lower exposure to ad campaigns combined with a higher reach resulted in higher click rates.

“Through a low reach, high frequency model, dot-com advertisers have numbed Web surfers by exposing them to the same ads over and over again,” said Allen Weiner, vice president of analytical services, NetRatings. “This contributes to low click rates and ineffective branding.” March 2001 research from the Nielsen//NetRatings AdSpectrum service segmented the top 100 online advertisers by industry: digital economy, including dot coms (e.g., RedEnvelope), hightech (e.g., Hewlett-Packard), and traditional (e.g., Procter & Gamble).

The data indicated that a lower reach, the percentage of active Web surfers who saw an ad, combined with a higher frequency rate, the number of times Web surfers viewed an ad banner, resulted in lower click rates. The high-tech industry garnered the highest reach of 17.1 percent, the lowest frequency rate of 9.4, and the highest click rate of 0.30 percent, with traditional companies following at 11.0 percent reach, 11.6 average frequency and 0.22 percent click rate (see Table 1 – CLICK above More Images). The digital economy industry scored a low reach of 12.6 percent, the highest frequency rate at 17.3 and the lowest click rate of 0.16 percent. Other forms of offline media generally have an average frequency rate of between three and four points.

“Savvy advertisers working with skilled agencies can try to avoid the current ad fatigue by using rich media and the new larger advertising sizes to refresh creatives,” said Weiner. “Since reach is the cornerstone of most branding efforts, the use of the Web for awareness building will be hindered until either networks band together to provide easy purchasing across multiple channels or the pool of channels dwindle, allowing each channel to capture a higher proportion of unique visitors,” added Weiner.