Clickthroughs - response to Ad Contrarian

Bob Hoffman, on his Ad Contrarian blog, expressed disgust recently at agencies' dishonest use of "branding" to wriggle out of the responsibility of actually selling a product. He also accused agencies of doing the same in the online arena, using "engagement" - a word you can interpret just about any way you like - to disguise the failure of their adverts to achieve anything more than minimal click-through rates.

Doubtless this is true. It's human nature to look for excuses, or retrofit a problem to your preferred solution. But I would be in favour of never counting click-through rates in the first place.

Of course they're going to have such low click-through rates you can barely measure them. If I'm reading a story about Rwanda, or the budget, or Fernando Torres on the Guardian site, I'm not going to break off to find out about budget airlines or slimline laptops. I just want to read the article.

How many people read a newspaper and immediately react when they see an advert, leaping straight to the computer or heading to the shop to find out more? It would be a ridiculous expectation, and barely any less silly online.

Online ads should be treated the same way as print - it's a chance to get your brand seen, and get a message across. The only meaningful metric is to ask how many people visit the page - and then make it as simple, eye-catching, and memorable as possible.


Plus ça change...