Consumer reasons for avoiding click-through ads

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According to WPP 24/7 Real Media study, there are a number of consumer subcurrents feeding the 2010 internet banner ad click-through rate of 0.09%. Fear, caution and mistrust are all in the mix, but disrupting their current activity is the number one reason for not clicking.


The survey was commissioned by digital advertising consultancy AdKeeper, and conducted by Nielsen.

AdKeeper Chairman.CEO Scott Kurnit commented, “Click-through rates for online ads are unacceptably low, which helps explain the disparity between online spending and time spent online by consumers. Advertisers spend only 15 percent of their budgets online, while consumers spend 28 percent their media time on the Internet. This is the first study to ask why consumers don’t click on ads and shows the importance of allowing consumers to control their interaction with online ads, making them useable content, not interruptions.”

Here are the top reasons that consumers become part of the 99.01% group rather than the 0.09% group:

* 61% don’t want to be distracted: “Online banner ads take me away from my current website, or from what I am doing.”

* 58% say online banner ads are not that relevant to them.

* 57% are wary of opening something they’ll wish they hadn’t.

* 57% are afraid of receiving spam from advertisers.

* 55% are worried about getting a virus.

* 54% don’t trust most online banner ads they see.

* 46% worry that pop-ups will take over their screen.

* 43% say online banner ads don’t seem interesting or engaging.

* 31% only want to click ads when they’re in the mood or interested in looking at them.

* 31% are worried that their Internet behavior will be tracked.

RBR-TVBR observation: The wide open consumer area on the computer is the wide open prairie of the wild wild west in terms of advertising venues – the chance of encountering nefarious content is real, and it can have direct economic repercussions by causing expensive damage to a consumer’s computer array. In general, internet advertisers need to learn how to entice a viewer in for a closer look. In particular, they have to find a way to take the perceived danger out of that closer look.

Most people find advertising to be annoying or distracting some or much of the time. But look at the additional hurdles facing internet ads: six of the categories on this list hinge on the words like “wary,” “afraid,” “worried” and “trust.” That is a fundamental consumer objection that must be overcome.

For the record, we believe this is a consumer advertising challenge, and much less of a problem in the BTB category, where there is a tightly defined audience engaged in a knowledgeable meeting of the minds in which the readers and the advertisers are generally already known to one another.