• by Sean Hargrave , Staff Writer, December 5, 2016

Digital marketing can often throw up some interesting conundrums. Surely I can't be the only person in the industry who wonders why so much budget is put into digital display when it is beset by some very obvious problems. Sure, you have fraud and viewability, but the one thing that has always struck me is that for an interactive format, a click-through rate of one in a thousand is deemed about average.

OK -- so digital display is not sold as being interactive. It's about awareness and branding, right? OK -- so now we have to throw in another small concern as well as the sucker punch. On the small concern side, we have yet to mention the brand safety risk of where your name might end up being seen online. The sucker punch? Everyone is going on about reaching the beloved Millennial, yet ad-blocking rates rise as you slide down the age scale from silver surfer to Millennial.

Some estimates suggest that among male Millennials, ad-blocker usage could be as high as one in four. So if you're trying to reach young males and you want to raise awareness, you just might want to have a think about those statistics again. As many as one in four could be blocking you, and even among those who are not, getting a reaction from one in a thousand would be good going.

This brings us neatly on to the question Forbes asked a bunch of marketers recently. How do you get around blocking? My favourite answers were two that fit perfectly together -- cut down on display and focus on email. When combined, that would be my advice -- to all bar the massive FMCGs that have budget to fling at display.

It's not just good advice -- in general -- it's actually a potential answer to reaching Millennials. Recent research reports from Adobe and Adestra separately identified email as the channel of choice when Millennials want to hear from brands. Adobe cited it as the favourite for more than one in two Millennials (58%), while Adestra increased that figure to three in four. Put very simply, Millennials know they are going to be targeted by brands, and when that happens they would far rather deal with emails than pop ups.

The Forbesarticle added a very simple stat. If you accept an average open rate of 20% for email, that's pretty good. It didn't compare this to display, but let's do that now. Most experts are agreed that in the UK at least, visibility is at its very best a 50:50 chance. So even if you have reached the -- shall we say -- three in four male Millennials who don't block ads, you have immediately made yourself invisible to half of them with each ad. That's one and a half people out of every four you are left with.

If you throw in fraud, it's easy to see how that one and a half in four Millennials can quickly become one in four that have a chance of seeing each ad. Of those, if more than one in a thousand interact with that ad, you'll be doing well.

Compare that to an open rate of 20% and there really is only one clear winner in the battle of getting in front of Millennials. It might not be the trendy answer, and it almost certainly won't be the one a guru will talk about at a conference, but there you have it. Want to reach Millennials? Save on display and get emailing.