Dwell Time Metrics
Many online advertisers, webmasters and marketing professionals rely solely on their PR ranking and the number of click thru’s their sites receive to determine whether or not their online advertising efforts are effective. Another potentially useful method of determining the effectiveness of you online marketing campaigns is through ‘dwell metrics’.
This phrase, while not a new concept, has been coined by Eyeblaster, an online research company. It simply means the amount of time consumers (potential customers) spend viewing or interacting with an advertisement.
Or, by their definition, ” Dwell Time is the average number of seconds consumers intentionally spend engaging with an online ad. The metric sums the following user actions: amount of time the mouse was over an ad, user-initiated video duration, user-initiated expansion duration, and any other user-initiated custom interaction duration. Unintentional dwell instances lasting less than one second are excluded.”
The amount of time spent on an ad depends on several factors including, but not limited to, the type of media the ad is composed of, whether or not it is interactive and how effective it is at engaging the viewer and encouraging viewers to pursue the ad.
According to the Eyeblaster bulletin on DwellTime,
”Recent years saw click thru rates (CTR) dropping from 5% to way below 0.4% (or 0.1% for standard banners). This has led some to conclude that ‘display advertising is dying’. On the other hand, data such as Comscore and OPA’s recent research showed that consumers exposed to display ads spend over 50% more time on an advertiser’s site the following month, viewing over 50% more pages than average visitors. This may lead to the conclusion that display advertising is more critical than ever. Human attention has become a scarce commodity.”
Clearly online advertisers are making sure they explore every angle and technique to help improve the success and exposure of their client’s products and services. Some of the key points that were uncovered by the Eyeblaster research that was conducted include the following facts:
• Consumers are 25 times more likely to spend meaningful time on the ad than click it
• When they do spend time, consumers spend close to a full minute of active engagement
• Video increases Dwell Rate by 30% and Dwell Time by 200% (in the US) or 100% (globally)
• Consumers react to ads differently depending on the time of day, week, or year
• Home-page media offers one of the highest Dwell Rates, but lowest Dwell Time
The bulletin helps highlight and clarify differences between click thru’s and dwell time.
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dBaseMedia.com | Search Engine Optimization | Lead Generation | Online Advertising
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