Starcom: Clicks Are Dead to Us (For Branding)

Starcom’s press release on “heavy clickers” is heavily discussed today.

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.

What is usually neglected in the commentary is the most important conclusion: clicks are not a good measure of brand-building campaigns to begin with. And they’ve never been considered as such, anywhere outside of direct response objectives.

The real question is whether this 6% of online population clicks on punch-the-monkey and win-an-ipod ads, which constitute the majority of display advertising online, or are they represented across the whole display ad spectrum? Were torrent sites considered on the same level as WSJ or NYT? And how is the demographic composition different for search engine ad clickers?