The first type of measurement that was
used to determine this information was a behavioral
one, the “click-through,” that measured
the number of times a visitor clicked on
a banner ad at the site. In addition, advertisers
could track how many sales resulted from
click-throughs. For many years, this was the
industry standard and everybody seemed
pleased. In the mid-1990s click-through rates
for some banner ads were around 30%. But
in the past few years, as the novelty of banner
ads has worn off and as more and more
banners clutter website pages, there has been
a dramatic decline in click-through rates. A
2001 study revealed that the click-through
rate had plummeted to only 0.3% (Green &
Elgin, 2001).
Given these dismal numbers, it is not
surprising that researchers looked for ways
to improve the effectiveness of banner ads.
In one instance, it was found that reducing
the number of banner ads on a web page
significantly increased the click-through
rate of those that remained (Klaassen,
2009). Robinson and Wysocka (2007) used
click-through data to determine that larger
banner ads with longer messages tended to
be the most effective.
Additional research examined the relative
efficacy of different kinds of display ads
including the skyscraper ad (tall and skinny
ads at the right and left side of a website),
pop-up and pop-under ads (ads that appear
when a web page is opened and have to
be closed to view the content underneath),
square and rectangular ads that appear
within the text portion of the website, and
floating ads that appear to hover over the
content of a web page. One study found that
consumers were most annoyed by pop-up
and floating ads (Burns & Lutz, 2006).
Danaher and Mullarkey (2003) noted
that the longer a person is exposed to a web
page, the more likely they are to remember
an ad. They also found that consumer motivation
for visiting the site had an impact on