ADTECH Analysis Reveals Online Advertising Click-through Rates are Falling

New Formats Needed to Generate Interest

Frankfurt, Germany, May 10th, 2007 – ADTECH, global providers of ad server technology has today revealed the results of its latest browser analysis and has revealed that just two out of a thousand viewed banners trigger a reaction from European Internet users. The current click-through rate of 0.18 per cent is the lowest since ADTECH started banner analyses in 2004. Then, the average was 0.33 per cent.

"We know from our regular ad analyses that click-through rates oscillate,“ commented Dirk Freytag, CEO at ADTECH. "They typically take a hit at the beginning of the year and rise with the temperatures and then hold a stable level until the end of the year."

Freytag continued: “The decreasing numbers overall in my opinion are due to the fact that the users have increasingly gotten used to online advertising during the last years. Banners are now commonplace on the Internet. New formats, such as video ads are needed to draw attention and generate clicks. Layer and Leaderboards in contrast have a high reminder potential even beyond the Web.”

Click-through behaviour also varies significantly between banner formats and countries. On average, the majority of clicks results from video ads (4.6 per cent) as well as pop-ups and layer ads at 0.6 per cent. Users click on the traditional full size banner more often (0.2 per cent) than the new large-format ad spaces such as Skyscraper (0.11 and 0.15 per cent) or Leaderboard (0.12 per cent).

The research identified the French and Italians as the most eager to click. Their click-through rates of 0.24 and 0.23 per cent respectively are double the rates of the Danes and Finns (0.1 per cent each).

Click-through rates by IAB format and country:

For a Graphical view click here...

The table below shows the click-through trends of the last three years:

For a Graphical view click here...

For its regular browser analyses, ADTECH evaluates several billion banner enquiries across Europe to its own Adserver. The present data was collected between January and March 2007 from 4,000 Web Sites. Browser distribution and click rates can vary according to Web Site, day of the week and time of day. Using its browser analyses, ADTECH data displays key trends but does not provide absolute figures.