Heavy-duty ad clickers could misguide marketers

A study shows a gulf between the figure of clicks on ads, and the figure of people behind the clicks. As a consequence, advertisers and marketers are advised to find ways other than clicks to optimize performance-based campaigns.

The study, "Natural Born Clickers," commissioned by Starcom and AOL's Tacoda and conducted by comScore, finds 16 percentage of net users click on 80 percentage of ads, and those people aren't representative of the full general online population.

"Close to 70 percentage of the online universe doesn't click at all," said Greg Will Rogers, VP of sales scheme at Tacoda.

Heavy clickers, classified as person who clicks on an ad four or more times in a month, comprise six percentage of the online population and 50 percentage of the clicks. Moderate clickers, Internet users who click ads two to three times per month, business relationship for 10 percentage of the online population and the additional 30 percent of clicks.

Results from stigmatization campaigns could be miscalculated based on these determination. "If they're optimizing on clicks they need to take a bigger picture view than just that," said Erin huntsman, EVP at comScore. "The media community, marketers, and advertisers need to go beyond the click, their media, purchasing, and evaluating. They are reluctant to go past it and they need to go past the click in their purchasing and their planning."

Instead of focus on the click, the option is to mark audiences. Will Rogers, whose company specializes in behavioral marketing, said media buyers have to balance metrics with how targeted the media is.

The research identifies the demographics behind the heavy clicker. They are slightly equally divided between male and female and betwixt the ages 25 to 44. The typical household income for heavy clickers is below $40,000. Online, heavy clickers are also more probably to visit auctions, gambling, and calling services sites.

"Heavy clickers spent five times more time online than a non-clicker, which to me is astounding," said Rogers. "Think about how much time we spent online and multiply that by five, and think about the amount of pages we consume, and multiply that by eight."

Rogers suggested heavy clickers respond to ads more often because they're exposed to more ads. While this group sometimes buys in response to advertising, he questions the long-term value for marketers.