Ad Serving Trend Report Reveals Sophistication Among Marketers Using Online Advertising.

DoubleClick Inc. announced results of its third quarter Ad Serving Trend Report based on more than 144 billion ads from thousands of clients. The data reveals that online advertising continues to prove its effectiveness for marketers. The majority of online ads are now targeted and rich media usage has increased. In addition, the data shows that click-through rates have remained constant and view-through rates have
increased.

Marketers show continued sophistication in planning and creative The data reveals that over 73% of all campaigns incorporated some form of targeting criteria in the third quarter. The fact that only one quarter of all ads served are run-of-network attests to a continued sophistication in the online planning process. Furthermore, keyword and key value remain the most common type of targeting used by advertisers with 82%* of targeted ads. This includes both keywords on search engines served by DoubleClick and content targeting on specific sites. Marketers have used geographic targeting in 12% of all targeted ads and targeting by time of day is now 3% of all targeted ads served.

Rich media continues to grow in importance for marketers According to the data, rich media usage has grown by 34% from the first quarter to the third quarter. In the third quarter nearly 25% of all ads served by DoubleClick were rich media. Rich media has been proven to have higher response rates and greater branding impact than static banners. Average click-through rates for rich media held constant at 2.7% in the third quarter as compared to 2.5% in the first quarter, while click-through rates for non-rich media declined from 0.4% in the first quarter to 0.27% in the third quarter.

“DoubleClick’s ad serving data represents one of the largest pools of information from both advertisers and publishers in the marketplace, allowing us to easily track trends such as marketers’ sophisticated use of keyword targeting, view-through rates and rich media,” said Doug Knopper, Vice President and General Manager, Online Advertising Solutions, DoubleClick. “We are encouraged by the continued growth of rich media and we expect our Macromedia alliance to make the rich media serving and tracking process much easier.”

The use of larger ad sizes has increased The data reveals that the use of IAB standard sizes has held steady at nearly 70% of all ads served which makes online advertising much easier to implement across a range of sites. Specifically, skyscrapers now account for over 7% of total volume, a 67% increase from the first quarter. The standard 468 x 60 pixel banner is still the most popular, accounting for nearly 50% of all ads served, with the next most popular size being the 120 x 600 pixel skyscraper at 6.3% of volume. Large rectangles which often feature some of the most dynamic creative, have increased in usage by 85% from the first quarter to the third quarter. However, they still account for a small percentage of total volume, 1.3% in the third quarter.

Marketers should also place importance on view-through rates As a result of better planning and more dynamic creative, average click-through rates remained constant at around 0.69% in the second and third quarters, compared to 0.7% in the first quarter, indicating an increasing maturation of the industry. In addition, view — through rates — which assess users who convert within 30 days of seeing an ad, but do not click on a banner – have risen from .36% in the first quarter to .51% in the third quarter. This translates to five consumers per thousand who respond to an ad that they do not click on. As a result, marketers who use click-throughs as the only response metric, are missing these conversions.

* This targeting number here is not comparable with the figure released in the previous Ad Serving Trend Report. Data in the previous report included other variables such as frequency capping which are included in targeting system reports but are not true forms of targeting.

For more information at http://www.doubleclick.net