Russians don't click with display ads

comScore, Inc, a leader in measuring the digital world, has announced the release of a report entitled Natural Born Clickers in Russia - Understanding How Display Advertising Works, which indicates that a very small group of Internet users who are not representative of the total Russian online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behaviour. The report includes findings from several studies of the view-through effectiveness of online display advertising and highlights key implications for stakeholders in the Russian digital media ecosystem.

The full complementary study is available for download in English or Russian here.

"It's critical for advertisers in Russia to understand that the click is at best an incomplete and at worst a misleading metric in evaluating the effectiveness of online display advertising campaigns," said Mike Shaw, comScore director of marketing solutions. "Evaluating campaign effectiveness using CTRs is at best short-sighted and, more likely, significantly under-values the ability of the online channel to build brands.

"If the digital media industry in Russia is to receive its fair share of branding advertising spend, the focus must shift away from the click as the primary metric for evaluating campaigns to a more holistic view that better reflects both the quality of the creative as well as the multiple ways in which online display ads can build brands."

Key research findings

The research analysed the behaviour of heavy, medium, light and non-clickers to demonstrate how these segments of clickers contribute to total click-through activity. The results show that only 10% of the entire Russian Internet audience in August 2010 clicked on even a single display ad. More importantly, heavy clickers - the top 20% of clickers - represent just 2% of the online population in Russia but generate 58% of all display ad clicks.

The comScore study also found that heavy clickers skew towards internet users between the ages of 35-44 and are marginally more likely to be female. Further analysis showed that heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical internet user; on a monthly basis, they spend over two and a half times more minutes online and consume twice as many pages as non-clickers. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit gambling, education and sports sites - a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.

"The implications of the Natural Born Clickers research is clear," added Shaw. "Those who evaluate their display campaigns on the basis of click-through activity mistakenly assume that clickers are representative of the audience of people that is influenced by the ads. However, as this current study and comScore research in other countries has shown, only a small proportion of Internet users click on ads.

"Relying on the behaviour of such a small segment of users who generate the vast majority of clicks and who do not resemble the typical Internet user will lead to poor decision-making in the process of planning, executing and evaluating online advertising campaigns."