• by June 13, 2002

DoubleClick Inc. today announced results of its Ad Serving Trend Report, which will be released on a quarterly basis. The results show click-through rates on rich media ads to be six times higher than non-rich media ads. The data also shows click-through rates on the recently published IAB size ads marginally higher than non-IAB size ads. The click-through rate is one of the measures used to determine the effectiveness of online advertising.

DoubleClick data shows that while the total number of impressions served by DoubleClick has held steady during the past year, with 56 billion ads served in May 2001 and 55 billion in May 2002, the click-through rate has increased significantly from 0.6% to 0.8% respectively, an increase of almost 35%. For the first five months of 2002, the click-through rate on DoubleClick served advertising has held constant at 0.8% (fluctuating between 0.78% and 0.83%).

Rich Media Effectiveness

DoubleClick's ad serving data reveals a major variance in the click- through rates of rich media ads (2.4%), which is six times higher than non-rich media ads (0.4%). On average 20% of the two billion ads that DoubleClick serves on a daily basis, are rich media.

Of the total rich media ads served by DoubleClick, more than 30% are Flash, and other popular rich media types include Unicast and Eyeblaster.

IAB Ad Sizes

Although DoubleClick served more than 8000 different ad sizes in May 2002, the percentage of ads that adhere to the IAB's voluntary Interactive Marketing Unit ad formats has grown from 3.4% of DoubleClick served ads in September 2001 to a current average of 5.5%. Of the static ads served by DoubleClick, there is a marginal difference between the click-through rates of the ads that adhere to the IAB formats (0.5%) and those that do not (0.4%).

"While click-through rate is only one method of assessing online advertising effectiveness, its stability over the past several months reflects the mainstream adoption of online advertising at levels consistent with traditional direct response rates," said Doug Knopper, Vice President and General Manager of Advertiser Solutions at DoubleClick. "We are very encouraged by the growth of rich media usage and the significantly higher click-through rates that these formats have been generating, which together reflect the increasing sophistication and performance of the online advertising medium."