Our latest summary of ad clickthrough rates statistics in the US, Europe, and Worldwide is designed to help you benchmark your paid digital and social media ads, set marketing budgets, and define your goals

If you're forecasting your digital media spend, you need to compare the ROI of your display ads, paid social, Google Ads, and social media. Depending on your objectives, it's worth reviewing and benchmarking the latest metrics like average click-through rates, average cost per click, and cost per lead. I've put this compilation together to help marketing professionals create direct response conversion models for digital marketing campaigns. By creating budget models using known benchmarks for average CTRs and digital media click-through costs, you can better forecast your return on investment from digital media ads. Our budgeting and forecasting spreadsheets include: Simple digital channel planning spreadsheet Conversion and revenue model spreadsheet Month-by-month customer acquisition spreadsheet …

A quick guide to different types of advertising for different purposes

This article explores different types of advertising online. Which ones are effective? Which among them actually help businesses reach their bottom line and business goals? In Digital Marketing: Integrating strategy and tactics with values, published 2014, Ira Kaufman and Chris Horton wrote that we’re well beyond the stage in which digital media is a fad. In fact, over the last 10 years, digital media has become the means by which consumers communicate with their friends and families, especially when making purchase decisions. This is the main reason why marketers embrace and invest in digital marketing and advertising. But, alongside these welcome developments in customer behavior and expectations, marketers are faced with increasing challenges - algorithm updates, changes in tracking, and increased noise in the digital landscape to name just three. As Anatolii Labinskyi put it 'change is…

Auto-play video and banner ads are seen to be least effective digital formats by global CMOs

What digital ad formats should you use to get the best ROI online? One way to answer the question is to flip it on its head, and ask, what are the least effective formats? According to a survey of global CMOs, the worst ad formats are auto-play videos and standard banners. Standard banners are hardly surprising, as ad blockers and 'banner blindness' have taken their toll of the years. It's gotten so bad that on many sites the majority of banner ad clicks are actually accidental. It's interesting that no CMOs thought that sponsored content was an ineffective technique, and very few thought pre-roll ads were ineffective. This shows that it isn't video ads that are ineffective, just video ads starting when the user hasn't opted in to watch anything. …

AdTech is a trendy industry but not all trends are worth following

“Hey look over here...we have what you need” illustrates the two main challenges advertisers face and have always faced. First, how to capture the audience’s attention. Second, once we have their attention, how do we sell them something. The reason these two edicts are so challenging is because the advertising highway, leading from initial attention to closing a sale, has several exits. The advertiser is willing to concede that not everyone will digest the message, and even fewer will then continue to make a purchase based on that message. As long as a certain percentage of people follow this (leaky) funnel and complete a sale, everyone is happy. Well, maybe not everyone. Despite heavy efforts by all of the leading AdTech companies like Google, Facebook, Yahoo and more, it is still not possible to deliver ads only to interested individuals who…