What is the average click through rate for online banner ads?

Well it depends...

Those last three words are perhaps one of the most unhelpful answers you can get.

The reason for this post is that I've just been asked this question by a colleague in sales.

Now usually I’d fob off my sales colleague and say that they shouldn't be selling on click through rate (CTR), they should sell on who will see the advert, the demographic of our web users, the power of our brand - after all an ad that doesn't get clicked on doesn't mean that it hasn't been seen - BUT this time I thought, 'Why not? There must be some figures out there'. So here goes:

	2% - Off the top of my head I’d say that a 2% CTR would be particularly successful. I’ve seen ‘averages’ suggested at conferences, seminars and by friends of anything from 0.1% to 1% but not usually any more.
	0.1 - 0.37% - According to this post that quotes a study by MarkingSherpa with CTRs by banner size - I'm not sure of the B2B relevance of this though.
	2.8% - This post quotes the same MarketingSherpa study however states a "conversion rate" of 2.8%. So what this means is with a CTR of 1%, you'd need 3571 people clicking till you made a sale (or whatever your conversion is).

So with this in mind, let's go back to, "Well it depends..."

What else matters for banner ads?

• Branding – banner ads are like TV ads – there as much about branding as they are about click through so that’s an unseen metric that should be sold to any customers.
• Association - By advertising with you they are receiving association with your website's brand and the prominence that provides. i.e. Seeing a brand advert on the ft.com will probably be enough to convince you the advertiser is not a dodgy spammer. The same advert on a blog such as this one, may not have the same effect.
• Demographics - The demographic of your site users are also important to this branding exercise. If you have statistics on your visitors you should sell this to the advertiser. This is how facebook advertising works.
• Page views should be as important a metric to quote as click-throughs. Page views are the only way to measure ad views. i.e. An advert has had 300 clicks, but if it's appeared on a page with 30,000 page views it's likely been seen and not clicked many times.

Home page of the Times Online

• Targeting– showing an ad for a video game company on the video game section of a technology website will get a higher click through than putting it in an irrelevant section.
• Call to action – asking the user to do something increases click through – most banner ads seem to just consist of a logo and click here with no reason why you should bother. i.e. Win a prize, get a discount, find something that no other website has and that you need etc.
• Ads designed for site – This is really just targeting again. The more personalized you can make your advert the better. It's even worth getting a screenshot of the website the advert is going on so you can mock up what it will look like when it's live.
• Testing – running multiple ad variations in different slots and optimizing based on their performance is a sure fire way to increase click through. The more you test, the better results you can get.

  A text ad from Google Adwords

  
  
• Positioning and size – an ad in the middle of the page gets higher click through than one at the bottom. At the top of the page, bigger ads perform better usually. Again, you can test this.
• Text vs. image – there’s a load of discussion online about which is better – text can be better when subtly put in with your main content. Again test!

Related posts
Stop pop-ups popping up, online advertising needs to evolve (Nov 2007)

8 top tips for video SEO and usability

These 8 tips are some best practice that you really should consider when posting videos online. Most are fairly common sense but still easy to forget.

Related post: For more detail on video promotion, keyword optimisation and transcripts (closed captions) see my original 4 video SEO tips.

This is from a presentation (news item 3 March 2009), originally given at the TFM&A conference by Webcredibles. I'll just summarise my notes here, their website has the original PowerPoint presentation (PPS, 7.4MB) with more information and screenshots.

	1	BIG CLEAR PLAY BUTTON I.e. In the middle of the video with the words ‘play video’ (unlike my image to the left!)
	2	Descriptive title and summary a. This is essential for SEO b. It also gives users a reason to the watch the video c. Make the title really obvious and descriptive, the summary also to be obvious and provide more detail.
	3	HAND-PICK a good still image A nice and intriguing still will encourage viewing.
	4	Length of video Include the video length wherever the video is seen – that includes in thumbnail links as well as the video itself – see YouTube results for example.
	5	RELEVANCE & CONTEXT a. Don’t have a separate video section as the primary method of finding video. b. Include video with content – ie. The BBC often have a video at the top of an article. The article will then go on to summarize what's in the video.
	6	Good / professional quality a. It’s a reflection of your brand
	7	Transcript or/and summary a. Essential for accessibility b. Essential for SEO c. Even if it's not a word-for-word transcript a summary will still help. Plus it may be a lot easier to produce than the word-for-word transcript.
	8	Promote your videos a. YouTube channel – put all your videos on YouTube b. Snippets – you could also just put snippets or teasers on YouTube with a link saying go to mysite.com to view the entire video.

Check your web design in different browsers online

Check what your website looks like in multiple browsers and versions with browsershots.org.

Different browsers render HTML differently. For example when I make a simple table in one of my posts so I can put an image with a caption under it hovering on the right hand side, I invariably find that it looks different in Firefox and Internet Explorer. See a comparison below:

Blog image in Firefox 3 - lovely space around the copyright	Blog image in IE 7 - horrible text coming too close to bottom of copyright

Now this becomes quite a serious problem if the difference between browsers renders some functionality or usability of your website unusable.

It's therefore important to check on building a new website how it renders in other browsers, something I’ve done in the past by having a number of browsers installed on my PC. There are also a number of programmes that allow you to have multiple versions of different browsers installed at the same time - for this exact purpose.

That is a bit of a hassle though, and browsershots.org makes this easier. You just have to wait for an hour or so. The site provides a quick view, as below, and also the option to download all screenshots in a handy zip file.

Problems

• As it works on a page by page basis, if you want to check multiple pages you will have to wait each time for them to upload all the screenshots - which can be up to an hour and a half depending on how many different ones you want.
• You're only allowed 100 shots in a 24-hour period. I've just done 37 so you can see how quickly you could use up your quota.
• Both these problems don't exist if you pay for the priority service at €21.95 a month.

Related posts
SEO problems of white text on a dark background (Jul 2008)
What font / text size online and how to set it in the CSS (Oct 2008)
Improve and check your website's readability (Mar 2009)

Introduction to WolframAlpha search engine

Launching soon is WolframAlpha, a search engine which is doing what Ask Jeeves tried to do in the late 90s - answer questions, sort of.

Get a good understanding of how it works with this introduction screencast.

Unlike last year's launches of Cuil and Wikia Search i'm far more excited about WolframAlpha as they are focusing on a part of search that isn't currently serviced sufficiently. The more factual infosheet side rather than a method of redirection to other websites (which is what Google does).

For me, it could take over from Wikipedia for provision of immediate-response factual based information (i'm not suggesting it will usurp Wikipedia, just for those times i need straight facts).

Queries such as, "What's the GDP of Germany?" or "Where is the ISS at?". Neither questions i ask as often as i type in "BBC football" into Google mind.

Relevant web links
Web tool 'as important as Google' - BBC News

Monitor the online buzz around your brand

How to ensure you know what people are saying about your brand in social media, and what you can do to influence the conversation.

This was the title of a panel debate about buzz monitoring at Internet World 2009. Chaired by Tom Nixon of NixonMcInnes, with his colleague and two other speakers whose names I can't remember, one from Huddle, one from Attentio.

ENGAGEMENT

Get EVERYONE in your company engaged. Get everyone monitoring your brands, or the brands relevant to them. The more eyes you have out there the more you will pick up and the less you will miss.

Some tools to help you monitor your brands

• Google Alerts - Type in a search term, such as your brand, and set up an email alert or RSS feed.
• Twitter Search - Search for terms and brands to find real time discussions on Twitter.
• Google Trends - Monitor regional interest in topics and their appearance in Google News.
• Technorati - Search the blogosphere for your terms and brands. Google Blog Search also does this, although not quite as well.
• Trendpedia - Free tool from Attentio who was one of the speakers. Not sure of effectiveness but worth a play.
• Company Buzz - Application on LinkedIn. Essentially it's just Twitter Search.
  

Tools to aggregate some of this content to you

There are lots of tools to monitor buzz but having to go from one to the other every day would be very time consuming so there are a variety of methods to get this information to come to you.

• Email alerts - this is part of Google Alerts and obviously lets you get the information to your inbox. Any RSS feed can also be set up as an email alert with a variety of tools, Feedburner is a good one.
• RSS readers - most if not all of the tools above output RSS feeds of your results. You can plug these into a reader such as Netvibes and iGoogle.
• Addictomatic – This is an RSS reader with a difference. It's automatically set up to look at a number of sources and tools. Just type in your brand or terms, here's one I made earlier for number 1 breakfast spread, Bovril.
  
• RSS manipulation - you can combine, change, filter and do pretty much anything with RSS feeds using Yahoo Pipes. It's not that simple for non-techies though, here's my short demo.
  

Things to bear in mind

A pack of fags

A mammal

• Setting up an alert for a brand which can also mean something else may bring irrelevant results: For example "Camel" can mean the cigarettes and the mammal with a hump.
• You could therefore nail it down by searching for "Camel cigarettes"
• Or look for buzz where both the words "Camel" + "smoking" are used
• And don't forget there may be other non brand names you can monitor, such as your CEO's name, any campaigns you are running, competitions you are doing, anything else about your brand that might be being talked about.

RESPOND

1. If someone is interested in your product, the sales team can act on this and chase.
2. If there are problems or issues with your brand then the relevant people can address these. Such as customer services or your technical support employees.
3. People like to know they are being taken care of.
4. Respond with AUTHENTICITY and have a clear consistent VOICE
5. Be INTERESTING, USEFUL and HELPFUL
6. This is a representative of your brand talking, don't reflect badly on the brand by being petulant or of no use.
7. Also remember that it's just people you are talking do, ditch the sales and marketing speak, be yourself.

Related posts
YouTube, Facebook, BBC, Reuters discuss social media (Feb 09)
Stop pop-ups popping up, online advertising needs to evolve (Nov 07)
Aren't Google Alerts clever? (Nov 07)

Should Google News pay publishers for their content?

Working for a publisher the discussion has come up on a number of occasions that surely Google should be paying us for the content we provide it via Google News.

Rupert Murdoch had a whinge about it last month:

"Should we be allowing Google to steal our copyrights? If you have a brand like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, you don't have to."

While, the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Thomson came out with the slightly ridiculous:

"There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet."

Both quotes from the BBC article about this subject.

Should Google pay publishers for content? - No

It's right to expect to be paid in some way for content that you have spent time and money to produce.

Maybe when advertising revenues were strong it was something you could afford to ignore but now this source is receding digital needs to step up and produce another channel of profit. However, stating that Google should be the one to provide this revenue is a rather naive argument.

Google has found a way with Google News of taking what is available for FREE on the internet and making money off the back of it - through referrals to the rest of their offerings.

Off the back of this the main newspapers received a boost in traffic from Google News. When ad budgets were high, all was good. Increased traffic meant increased revenue from cost per impression, cost per click & cost per acquisition advertising business models.

But with no advertising money available thoughts turn back to the evil G. Surely it makes sense that if Google are making money from this content when no one else is then they should share this pot around.

Well no it doesn't, it's a crap argument. The publishers are offering their content for free online, to everyone. You can access the same content via traditional search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live Search) but nobody is asking for cash from referral here.

Until the content is not available for free on the internet, Google are never going to volunteer cash. They'll wait until somebody calls their bluff. If all the main newspapers pulled their feeds from Google News then they might enter into a discussion. This hasn't happened, yet.

Despite this Google still felt it was necessary to bitch back at the publishers claiming,

"[Google] has shared £3.3bn with publishers through ads program AdSense in the last year".

Well good point, but firstly Adsense is opt-in so doesn't apply to all publishers on Google News and secondly by making this statement Google is admitting that they do indeed owe the publishers something, schoolboy error.

How else can publishers make money online? - Subscriptions

Up until very recently most of the big players online were reluctant to broach the other obvious money from content method - paid for content / subscriptions.

The big UK exception to this is the FT, who in 2007 introduced a hybrid system where you could have 30 views per month before having to pay.

Subscription models become more viable with less money from advertising as site traffic and unique users become less important to the bottom line. Quality, uniqueness and diversity of content take over and differentiation from the competition becomes a sales tool for attracting the lucrative subscription market.

With the addition of subscription revenues, less revenue is needed from advertising to meet commercial targets. The lower traffic figures as a result of content gating and its knock on effect on advertising is therefore diluted.

And not to forget, Google News will still index your site (albeit with the 'subscription' tag).

The future? - Unique online offerings

Gated content is the online equivalent of buying a newspaper. Getting Google to pay you is the online equivalent of getting the newsagent to pay for your newspaper before selling it on.

"Online equivalents" are lazy ways of trying to transform business models to the digital age. In true 1990s buzzword speak it's not thinking outside of the box.

The brands that will prosper online are the ones that start to use the internet for its strengths:

• Huge audience
• Extremely fragmented demographics
• Extremely niche markets available
• Extremely flexible routes to market
• Personalisation and tailored news opportunities
• Portability
• This list is in no way complete; tell me more in the comments!

Instead of indiscriminately slapping a subscription wall around content, publishers should take a leaf out of Google News' book.

Use your generic consumer focused general news content as a free traffic driver - that's your website's bait. Let anyone view it, pimp it to every news aggregator going and if advertising returns you still have pages with high traffic. It will also keep your website brand out there.

Use this driver to push your paid-for content. Charge for all truly unique content, ie.

• Areas of news that only you produce and people need - ie. industry focused business news, such as the FT provides
• Premium reports - a tech magazine could publish SEO guides, link building guides, technical help
• Customised reports - Repurpose your unique content into bespoke industry reports for companies and charge for it. Ie. Look at where a company has been in your news and help them to create a report of their brand values in their industry.
  
• Sponsored content - Do you have a specialist news channel? Offer a sponsorship package where a company could provide content, sponsor competitions and get involved with your readership in a way not possible with banner ads.
• Apps - With the rise of iPhones & Blackberrys, apps are big business. Create something so unique you can charge.
• Sell bespoke content creation - Companies like their customers to think they know their markets. As a publisher you are in a unique position to provide your content in formats that companies can align themselves with - i.e. targeted minisites for brand building.

If people really need something and can't go elsewhere they will pay.

Be creative with pricing strategies. Online items can be sold on an ad hoc basis (download this PDF report for £10) or via a number of tiered subscriptions providing varying levels of access to your content (£900 a year for full unlimited access).

Want to know how to make lots more money online (not a spam link!)? Then read this fantastic presentation by faberNovel about Google's business model.

Related posts
Don't let Google boss your website around
Getting more hits from Google News
Google and Max Zorin, Bond baddies set on world domination

The future of mobile: widgets

Vodafone Widget Manager

This article about mobile widgets touches on what will (a long time from now) be a very interesting method of content distribution.

[NB: This guest post is taken from an email one of my colleagues sent me a couple of days ago.]

Mobile widgets, in my mind, will be like the current iPhone apps mixed with databases, HTML, Javascript and XML with cross device/platform support.

The fundamental idea of the mobile widget, is to “write once, run anywhere”, where you download all the necessary files (javascript libraries, xml files, HTML code) in the first instance, then not need to load those files after that point. Increasing load times/accessibility and decreasing net traffic.

The author of the article works on mobile browser compatibility for the W3C and is slowly developing the mobile widget platform.

Something for the future.

A thorough analysis of YouTube comments, sarcasm, abuse and silliness

Funnier than most videos on YouTube is the comments beneath them. Because YouTube reaches the entire world, young and old, stupid and clever, communist and capitalist, racist and fascist (these aren't all antonyms) the comments reflect this diverse group.

Just look at any of the top videos' comments from the front page of YouTube to find a profanisaurus of abuse, sarcasm, banality and incredibly profound discussion, not.

For example, I’ve applied some basic marketing research to the below video. If you can't be bothered to watch or it's been taken down it's a clip of BBC horse racing reporter Clare Balding commenting on the winner of the Grand National's dodgy teeth.



Of the first 157 comments they can be split into a variety of themes as displayed in the following table. A fascinating and many may say unnecessary, insight into the minds of the YouTube community.

Gist of comment	Comment count	YouTube username	Typical comment
Someone politely taking offence at the incident	16	emmafan4evr	I think that was really rude of her. How would she like it if she was embarrased like that on live tv?
Someone taking offence and adding abuse	34	AcademyAwardsGirl	That was horrible. What a bitch!
People pointing out Clare's hypocrisy	3	Coli20	Glass houses and all that.......
People pointing out Clare's hypocrisy with abuse	26	eddyspencer	She said that while she is more manly than him...she is the rough version of Gordon Brown i think..
General abuse of Clare	29	adamfatherofall666	she an inbread dog
People commenting on the beauty of the other comments	14	thispagesux	ha ha ha, these comments are brutal lol.
Agreeing with Clare's evaluation of the teeth	9	loxj	Well he does have bad teeth....
People taking offence at others comments	20	moroccovids	r u a bible basher
Bad jokes	1	563421094	Well it is a horse race.............
Other random comments	5	girlzruleboysdrool	I thought all you Brits had bad teeth....what's the problem? haha. Calm down.

Now I’m not outside of all this banter, partaking as I have in a bit of discussion, or 'user baiting' when I know I really shouldn't. See below, my comments are 'ME'.

A lot of YouTube users have trouble with sarcasm



ME (6 months ago) +1
I'm just flabbergasted Brad and Morgan agreed to reshoot that scene. Not Kevin Spacey though, he'll do anything for a bit of publicity.

BryanWay (6 months ago) +3
They didn't reshoot it. It's simply been re-edited.

BlightyLume (6 months ago) 0
I think he may have been joking, friend...

1984slament (5 months ago) 0
really? ... lol

AustinBrock (6 months ago) +1
I think sexteta was just being sarcastic...

ME (6 months ago) 0
It's not reshot? OK that makes sense, I was wondering how they'd get permission to fly the helicopter over the power lines again. Plus Brad Pitt is fatter now and Morgan's got a limp.

This one I’m particularly proud of as my comment can't now be viewed due to the quantity of 'thumbs down' it has got.



ME (5 months ago) -9
What? I just slept through that. It was terrible. Another star in the tradition of the late great Boris Klinger

Personally, I don't care for puppets much. I don't find them believable.

chewbuggars (6 months ago) +3
it doesn't matter to these guys, besides they already knew that you weren't gonna like it.

mahina1963 (6 months ago) +3
the apparent stupidity of some people never cease to amaze me...did you not listen to what they were talking about? Why, YOU!!

ME (3 weeks ago) 0
I've just noticed that my comment is up to -9, the sense of irony is not lost on me.

mavis41558 (1 week ago) 0
I have four channels just so I can double up on negatives

And here's me discussing the issues of this sarcasm with other users.



rvfharrier (3 months ago) +3
Don't people here get the joke? It's not meant to be a serious "this is the stig" video, it's quite funny actually. People on youtube need to think.

ME (3 months ago) +1
"Don't people here get the joke?"
- Ah, now that's the age old YouTube question. Do people commenting on YouTube often not get the joke. I think the obvious answer here is no they don't, but then that just makes it more entertaining for the rest of us to take the piss out of them. Not that i'd ever do that of course...

Wouter259 (3 months ago) 0
You got that right.. xD

Airborne102st (3 months ago) +2
HAHAHAHAHAm how funny.

In this one i'm rumbled for trying to pretend to be sarcastic.



ME (3 weeks ago) 0
I remember watching this in 1985 and wondering at the potential fallout that could occur.

ditde (3 weeks ago) -6
..this wasn't around in 1985. It's just a teaser for Watchmen.

Strange boy.

ME (3 weeks ago) +5
Ha ha, you think Watchmen is just a film? Wait till Dr Manhattan hears of this.

ditde (3 weeks ago) -1
Now he's trying to turn this into a joke when he was clearly trying to look smart.

raguv2000 (3 weeks ago) +1
someone doesn't understand sarcasm

ignorant boy

ditde (3 weeks ago) -1
Was it sarcasm? Didn't seem like it to me.

If it was then I'm sorry, but I doubt it.

ME (3 weeks ago) +1
My memory serves me right. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

DoctorWeeTodd (2 weeks ago) 0
My God...

Well, learn to observe.

SoylentGreeeen (3 weeks ago) -2

You're stupid.

And finally, here i am trying to engage in intelligent discussion and getting destroyed in one cutting reply.



ME (5 hours ago) -2
Great video but there's no need to make it look like it's nothing to do with McLaren and Blackberry from the beginning.

Be honest about the fact it's all done by McLaren and their viral agency and we'll still watch the video.

Geepak (5 hours ago) 0
Thats the whole point of a viral. You really aren't that clever.

Withnail & I and Italian Job locations on Google Street View

Google launched Street View today in the UK and Netherlands. Which has quickly brought up a whole load of furious email forwarding of friends spotting themselves going to lunch, people being sick, and i'm sure to be followed by a lot more dodgy stuff as in the American version.

Anyway so to celebrate this momentous occasion in blurring the lines of privacy and helping people with no sense of direction, i've gone looking for movie locations. I'm sure a commercial use will come along soon but this is more fun.

WITHNAIL AND I

The Mother Black Cap - The pub where Withnail and I run out of following the 'perfumed ponce' incident.


Monty's house


THE ITALIAN JOB
The Royal Lancaster - Where Charlie has his getting out of jail present.


Croaker's pad - highlighting the limits of Street View, Croaker's pad is up a road that's not available on Street View so you'll have to look down the road to see it (on the left).


Go to the Movie Locations site to find more.

Update: And yet more classics - Top Gear's Stig, man having a wee, Dave Gorman, man taking picture of Street View.

And some i found myself: Man breaking into (?) house, the diving angels in Piccadilly Circus,

Check when GMail goes down with Google's status dash

I stumbled across Google's Apps Status Dashboard last week. It just lets you know which of Google's apps is having service issues and often a time frame of the fix.

It won't do anything to prevent a Twitter storm next time GMail fails but it's handy if you use any Google Apps for important business.