ChasNote

A study by Comscore, AOL’s Tacoda and Starcom back in February 2008 showed that 50% of all clicks on banner ads were done by just 6% of Internet users. A repeat of the study, published in October 2009, shows the core group of heavy clickers (8% now) are responsible for 85% of ad clicks.

And these “natural born clickers” are not the most desirable demographic for most advertisers: They skew toward Internet users with household incomes below $40,000 who spend more time than average at gambling sites and career advice sites.

Digg’s lead scientist, Anton Kast, recently shared with me an analysis of who’s clicking on Digg Ads, the ads on Digg that give readers the option of Digging and burying them like regular Digg stories. Since advertisers buy Digg Ads on a cost-per-click basis, I was eager to see the results.

Instead of concentrated click activity by a small group of (inexplicably) click-happy individuals, clicks on Digg Ads (red line) are spread across a wide population of light clickers. In other words, the branded content items promoted by Digg Ads units is appealing to lots of people, each of whom clicks on an occasional ad. The profile of these Digg Ads clickers roughly matches Digg’s upscale demographic, unlike the “natural born clickers.”

Digg Ads (still in beta) doesn’t yet offer much targeting, so relevance can’t entirely explain these better results. Digg Ads do, however, offer advertisers an opportunity to speak to Digg readers in the “local vernacular” of Digg — blue headlines that point to content next to yellow boxes with numbers in them, and the option to Digg and bury the sponsored content just like organic content stories on the site. Kind of like the paid search ads on Google results pages, which I bet have a diversity of clickers that goes well beyond the “natural born clickers” too.

Targeting (relevance) is great. But finding ad formats that are native to content experiences may be just as important.

New research commissioned by Starcom, Comscore and Tacoda finds that optmizing for clicks likely means optimizing away from building brand with your best customers.

“CHICAGO – Media agency Starcom USA, behavioral targeting network Tacoda, and digital consumer insight company comScore collaborated on a research study whose results call into question click-through rates as a primary source of accountability for Internet display advertising aimed at brand-building. Called ‘Natural Born Clickers,’ the study reveals that a very small group of consumers who are not representative of the total U.S. online population is accountable for the vast majority of display ad click-through behavior.”

The power clickers have less desirable demographics:

“The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites –- a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers.”

And there’s no correlation between clicks and brand metrics.

“Further preliminary Starcom data suggests no correlation between display ad clicks and brand metrics, and show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked. The research presentation suggests that when digital campaigns have a branding objective, optimizing for high click rates does not necessarily improve campaign performance.”

Sez Erin Hunter, EVP at Comscore:

“‘While the click can continue to be a relevant metric for direct response advertising campaigns, this study demonstrates that click performance is the wrong measure for the effectiveness of brand-building campaigns,” said Erin Hunter, executive vice president at comScore. “For many campaigns, the branding effect of the ads is what’s really important and generating clicks is more of an ancillary benefit. Ultimately, judging a campaign’s effectiveness by clicks can be detrimental because it overlooks the importance of branding while simultaneously drawing conclusions from a sub-set of people who may not be representative of the target audience.”"

Ree’s Confessions of a Pioneer Woman is among several hip-young-women sites included in a conversational marketing campaign for Nintendo’s Wii. This week she replaced her “Give This Picture A Caption” contest with a “Share An Embarrassing Moment and Win a Wii” contest. She posted the contest today at 3pm Pacific; as I write this, 5pm Pacific, her readers have submitted 1357 embarrassing stories. (UPDATE 2/8: By 9pm yesterday when she closed the contest, 2992 stories had been entered.) Ree’s readers want their Wiis!

Waiting for the crew at Farley’s to brew up a cup of tea this afternoon, I flipped through the print edition of AdWeek for the first time in about a decade, and two stories caught my attention, both reminders that size still matters in publishing.

First, Starcom USA Unveils New Print Accountability Tool: The agency “has been doing bigger deal in print but with fewer magazines” in order to get a better read on the performance of campaigns, creative messages and publications. If other agencies are doing the same, it means the financial pain across the print-publishing landscape will be felt more acutely at niche magazines.

Second, Will a Free WSJ.com Pay Off for Murdoch?:

“‘Because of the their model,’ said Jeff Lanctot, svp, global media at Avenue A/Razorfish, ‘they are a smaller property.’ That by nature, can sell only so many ads. Consider that Yahoo Finance generated 470 million page views in October, versus 11 million for WSJ.com, per comScore. ‘They could instantly become a more attractive property’ if the site goes free, Lanctot added.”

Niche publications are great for advertisers in terms of targeting and audience composition, but without scale to go along with quality small publishers may not get a seat at the table.