Commentary

North America Banner Click Through Rate Up To 0.14%

According to a new study by Sizmek, reported by the Marketing Charts staff and based on an analysis of hundred of billions of impressions, the average click-through rate for a standard banner ad globally is 0.16%, though there were considerable differences across regions.

Regional Banner Ad Engagement (1st Half 2016; 1.3MM Individuals, Billions of Impressions.)

Region

Standard Banner CTR

Rich Media CTR

Rich Media Unique Interaction

Global

0.16

0.27

1.19

North America

0.14

0.21

1.13

Latin America

0.25

0.17

0.84

Europe

0.14

0.35

1.47

East Asia

0.12

0.36

0.76

South Asia

0.28

0.35

1.47

Data Source: Sizmek, November 2016

Regionally, average CTRs for standard banner ads were highest in Latin America (0.25%) and lowest in Australia/New Zealand (0.08%). The North American average of 0.14% was slightly below the global average, but is up from a few years ago (when it was 0.08% in 2013), says the report.

Rich media ads continued a long-standing result of having higher click-through rates. Globally, they averaged 0.27%, with several regions boasting CTRs of 0.34-0.36%. The ANZ region was the lowest at 0.08%, though Latin America (0.17%) was also below-average.

The report says that rich media’s main goal often goes beyond click-throughs, such that it’s important to also look at overall unique interaction rates. These averaged 1.19% globally for rich media, with Europe (1.48%) and South Asia (1.47%) leading the way and ANZ (0.52%) once again trailing.

Analysis of the global display ad benchmarks also shows significant disparities by industry, says the report. Standard banner CTRs were highest for the apparel (0.24%), telecom (0.21%) and retail (0.2%) verticals and lowest for the sports (0.07%), corporate (0.08%) and careers (0.1%) sectors, according to the report.

Corporate (0.53%) did much better in leading rich media CTRs, followed by telecom (0.52%), with medical (0.12%) and gaming (0.13%) bringing up the rear, while rich media interaction rates were highest for retail (9.11%) and restaurants (6.85%), well above the rates for the laggards, medical (0.7%) and travel (0.81%).

Rich media CTRs outperformed standard banner CTRs in 19 of the 21 sectors analyzed, with standard banners holding a slight edge only in the gaming and medical verticals, says the report.

Regional Banner Ad Engagement (1st Half 2016; 1.3MM Individuals, Billions of Impressions.

Industry

Standard Banner CTR

Rich Media CTR

Rich Media Unique

Global average

0.16%

0.27%

1.19%

Apparel

0.24

0.50

1.69

Auto

0.15

0.20

1.88

B2B

0.20

0.22

1.18

Careers

0.10

0.17

2.07

CPG

0.17

0.19

3.45

Electronics

0.31

0.43

1.62

News & Media

0.16

0.42

4.33

Restaurants

0.17

0.22

6.85

Retail

0.20

0.37

9.11

Tech & Internet

0.13

0.35

5.97

Data Source: Sizmek, November 2016

Looking first at non-interactive in-stream video, says the report, CTRs averaged 1.5% on a global basis, ranging from a high of 5.82% in the Middle East & Africa to a low of 0.42% in North America. Video start rates were more consistent, ranging from 85% in South Asia to almost 98% in North America.

The fully played rate averaged 72.9% globally, registering a low of 50.2% in South Asia and a high of 81.2% in ANZ.. Interestingly, the fully played rate was highest in the regions with the lowest CTRs, while those with relatively high CTRs had low rates of videos being played to completion. This suggests that in those regions, such as South Asia, East Asia, and Middle East & Africa, users are more comfortable interrupting the video to go to the advertisers’ suggests the report.

Turning to interactive in-stream video, says the report, the global average interaction rate was 4.69%, buoyed by double-digit rates in Latin America and the Middle East & Africa, but dragged down by a very low rate (0.28%) in South Asia and a below-average rate in North America (3.87%).

The report outlines start rates and fully played rates for HTML5 rich media, comparing those with in-stream video rates. Overall, in-stream start rates on a global basis were 3 times higher than rich media with video start rates (92.5% and 30.8%, respectively), which the analysts attribute to videos within rich media units having to commonly be initiated by hand.

Though rich media with video (63% globally) trailed in-stream video (72.9%), rich media with video sported a higher fully played rate in South Asia and Middle East & Africa, while also rivaling in-stream video in Latin America and East Asia, says the report. The biggest gaps in favor of in-stream video were in North America (80% vs. 66.1%) and Europe (74.7% vs. 62.5%).

The report concludes by noting that the relatively narrow gap in completion rates suggests that “once the video in a rich media unit starts, audiences are very likely to watch it to completion, at least, almost to the same extent that they would watch an in-stream unit to completion after it has begun.”

For additional information from MarketingCharts, please visit here, or from Sizmek, click here.

 

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