Clicks are down. Way down. And the percentage of those that do the largest percentage of clicking is a small percentage of online users. In other words, 8 percent of the online users represent 85% of clicks.
RESTON, VA, October 1, 2009 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world today released the results of an update to its highly publicized “Natural Born Clickers” research, originally conducted two years ago in conjunction with media agency Starcom USA and Tacoda. The collaborative studies focus on an understanding of how U.S. Internet users click on display ads. The updated results based on March 2009 comScore data…indicated that the number of people who click on display ads in a month has fallen from 32 percent of Internet users in July 2007 to only 16 percent in March 2009, with an even smaller core of people (representing 8 percent of the Internet user base) accounting for the vast majority (85 percent) of all clicks
“The act of clicking on a display ad is experiencing rapid attrition in the current digital marketplace,” said Linda Anderson, comScore VP of marketing solutions and author of the study.
The point of the article was to assist those marketers in finding value in the 85 percent that do not click shit. The result is that people like us affiliate marketers might potentially have a hard time collecting money online. The upside is affiliate programs and revenue sharing programs like Adsense are going to have to improve their game to help us sell their shit, thereby helping us.
Times are changing.
12 responses so far ↓
raki // Nov 11, 2009 at 10:05 pm
..first post!
I’ve become a fan actually, still going through your old posts.
Splork // Nov 12, 2009 at 8:53 am
Cool. Thanks for reading.
zeeray // Nov 12, 2009 at 9:40 am
I need to refresh my knowledge then. I thought 15% of the users account for 85% of the clicks. In any cases, it is not a good trend to welcome if you are making a living out of clicking. Google’s adsense revenue has been growing over the years, so we need to take this study results with caution.
Phil // Nov 13, 2009 at 8:34 am
Too bad people are making more and more money online through PPC ads even so. Has the amount of internet users risen ? I bet it has quite a lot since FB and other shit are becoming more and more popular. This results in a lot of shitty social traffic that does not click ads.
that 8% might just be the “targeted traffic” – looking for products and services and actually buying something.
My point is that percentages do not give a correct estimate here about the efficency of the ads.
Splork // Nov 13, 2009 at 10:17 am
I don’t disagree Phil but any way you cut it, 8%, and dropping, is not a good percentage no matter who is making the money and how efficient the ads are, social traffic or not. I’m guessing that if you want people to click something like an Adsense ad or affiliate link we better make sure that link answers their inquiry with a laser focus. Like you say, efficiency. Random clicking is apparently dying based on these studies.
Roland // Nov 15, 2009 at 6:26 pm
What a ridiculous post from someone who obviously has no idea what they’re talking about. Percentages and numbers like that mean nothing. Social media has risen enormously over the past five years or so, and these people are clearly not the ones that are going to be buying or clicking online. The idea that targeted traffic has somehow begun to grow out of clicking ads is laughable.
Splork // Nov 15, 2009 at 9:16 pm
It’s a study. Ignore it at your peril. I make money on whatever percentage is clicking. But I won’t shrug it off as “ridiculous.
Balph // Nov 17, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Google could be destroyed by some irate Adsense publishers. All it takes is one person to get click happy on you and you can lose your account. Google is terrified of invalid clicks. If enough google-haters go on clicking sprees, Google will have to close down many an adsense account. If they go after the search pages, then Google will eventually have to live of CPM ads instead of cost per click.
Being an adsense publisher is a very risky business model. But so is Google…
The question is whether this is a good or bad thing. On the plus side, Google’s billions supports a lot of free software. On the downside, Google is collecting a lot of information on all of use through its adsense windows. And most obvious to our community, Pay Per Click encourages Crap is King. If advertising was mainly branding vs. going for clicks, quality would be more valuable. Branders want to be associated with quality.
Splork Fan // Nov 23, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Spot on, Splork. You confirmed what I always strongly suspected.
Thats explains why there has been a steady decline in the number of scraper splogs over the past 2 years. For the simple reason, they don’t pay well anymore, and they don’t get clicked as much any more. Yay!
The Web and the world is changing. Adsense has always been a risky business model, and its continued viability rests on the USD holding up.
You just need to ask the simple question, why is Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube (all free) unable to pay their costs through PPC?
This then begets the question, would subscription based services be the way forward in the coming future? Will the Internet continue to be free? Or as Murdoch puts it…Content should not be free….
Stuff to ponder on.
scheng1 // Dec 8, 2009 at 9:27 am
That’s true. If readers dont click, we dont earn and Google does not earn too.
Ray Davies // Dec 9, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Never mind this, where’s Splork? Come back, we miss you!
Ray
LR4 // Dec 24, 2009 at 7:01 pm
All the more reason to quit with the spam sites and do real, quality sites. Then you got a shot at building something brand advertisers might be interested in. Pick stuff that even smaller businesses might be interested in. Like if you like cycling, a cycling site would appeal even to some smaller manufacturers…
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