• by Masha Geller , July 10, 2001

For the past day and a half, all anyone in this industry has been talking about is that CBS Marketwatch.com announcement about omitting click through rates from ad performance reports. The website intends to shift the focus toward campaign reach, post-impression analysis and brand awareness, similar to metrics used in other media.

Frankly, I'm a little confused. But before I get into that, let me emphasize that I agree with the many expert minds who think (a) that CTR is a pathetic metric that fails to account for the branding and behavioral effects, and (b) that the industry should do away with CTRs as quickly as possible. Heck, the latest study from SitesOnline shows exactly why online ads should not be sold using CTRs (download the study from http://just-sites.com/branding if you're interested.)

I don't, however, agree with the fuss that's been raised over this announcement. First of all, Marketwatch.com clients interested in click-through data will still be able to obtain it upon request, so what's all the hoopla about? I bet most of the site's advertisers will continue to ask for CTRs because - like it or not - that's the way online ad media is bought today. And that's not likely to change overnight even if a site like Marketwatch wills it so. Is it a step in the right direction? Of course, and someone's got to be first. But that someone should have taken more care to do it right.

How? Well, the site itself is not ready. Let me quote Jerry Back, Associate Director of Online Media at Publicis & Hal Riney, who emailed me today on this very subject. Just this afternoon, he counted 128 clickable elements on the site's homepage. "If CBS Marketwatch wants to compete with media that CAN provide brand awareness and positioning environments such as TV, radio, magazines and newspaper," he wrote, "it either needs to reformat its pages to include "non- scrollable" ad units, use intrusive interstitial ad units, or significantly lower its CPM because it is NOT achieving a parity level with those other brand-building media for the same CPM paid."

Right now, Jerry wrote, CBS is basically saying "we don't have strong numbers to support advertisers' direct response initiatives, so we're scrapping them, and, by the way, we are a brand-building medium on par with TV, radio, magazines and newspaper." Yes, he said, "there are other direct response metrics such as cost-per-acquisition that are more relevant than click-through rates, but if CBS Marketwatch is at the same time saying it is competitive with TV, radio, magazine and newspaper brand building environments, it sure doesn't look that way to us."

So there you have it. Does this announcement signal the end of CTR? Unfortunately, I doubt it. It does, however, sound like CBS MarketWatch.com is REALLY desperate.

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