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The Short Life Span of Ad Banners

Posted on September 7, 2007. Filed under: Internet marketing articles |

Source: AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix. The majority of all online ad banners have short life spans, running on average three weeks or less, according to a new report released by AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix. With few advertisers running large online campaigns, an overwhelming majority of advertisers have less than a 0.01 percent share of all online advertising impressions.

Key findings from the latest AdRelevance Intelligence Report, which analyzes standard 468×60 banner ad campaigns on the top 500 Web sites between July 1999 and June 2000, include:

• Although most banner ads run for three or fewer weeks, the average banner runs for five and a half weeks.
• The automotive industry schedules online ads to run the longest, an average of 7.8 weeks. This is almost twice as long as the average banner duration for a hardware and electronics ad, which typically lasts 4.1 weeks.
• The consumer goods industry embraces the most targeted ad approaches, with only 40 percent of online impressions appearing on broad reach sites like portals, search engines and community destinations. At the other end of the spectrum, Web media, financial services and travel advertisers appear to be targeting the least, running an overwhelming majority of ad impressions on broad reach sites.
• While the average campaign in the second quarter weighed in at 7,265,000 impressions, more than half of all advertisers ran campaigns with less than 44,000 impressions. A campaign this small would only garner a 0.0003 percent share of voice on a major portal like Yahoo!.
• Automotive industry runs banner ads almost twice as long as hardware and electronics advertisers 
• Broad reach more popular than targeted approach for recent online campaigns.

“While most advertisers are running relatively short campaigns, shorter campaigns are not necessarily better campaigns,” said Charlie Buchwalter, vice president of media research for the AdRelevance division of Media Metrix. “Although shorter campaigns may concentrate banner impressions, thereby increasing the share of voice and share of market for an advertiser, only longer campaigns can bring about a change in consumer attitudes and behavior. The latest AdRelevance findings suggest that automotive, financial services and travel advertisers are out to change behavior because they are running banners the longest, when compared to other industries.”

Table A:		Length of Time Banners Run
		Source: AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix
		Number of Weeks	Percent
		1	23.7%
		2	16.0%
		3	11.9%
		4	9.3%
		5	7.8%
		6	5.4%
		7	4.0%
		8	3.3%
		9	2.8%
		10	2.4%
		11	1.8%
		12	1.6%
		13	1.3%
		14	1.1%
		15	0.9%
		16	0.8%
		17	0.7%
		18	0.6%
		19	0.5%
		20	0.5%
		More than 20	3.7%

Table B:	Average Number of Weeks a Banner Runs by Industry Source: AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix
	Industry	Average Number of Weeks
	Automotive	7.8
	Financial Services	6.9
	Travel	6.0
	Consumer Goods	5.6
	Web Media	5.5
	Software	5.1
	Retail	5.0
	Entertainment	4.9
	Business-to-Business	4.9
	Telecommunications	4.8
	Hardware & Electronics	4.1

Table C:	Share of Impressions by Site Type Source: AdRelevance, a division of Media Metrix
	Web Media	86.20%	13.80%
	Financial Services	83.00%	17.00%
	Business to Business	72.70%	27.30%
	Telecom	72.70%	27.30%
	Retail	70.10%	29.90%
	Software	69.00%	31.00%
	Entertainment	58.90%	41.10%
	Hardware and Electronics	53.50%	46.50%
	Automotive	51.90%	48.10%
	Consumer Goods	40.40%	59.60%

The AdRelevance Intelligence Report also analyzes ad impression distribution strategies for campaigns running four, eight and 12 weeks – revealing that banner impressions, on average, are heavier in the beginning of four and 12 week campaigns. On the other hand, campaigns running eight weeks tend to feature higher impression levels in the middle. Impressions for the average banner in an eight week campaign peaked in the fifth week.

“There is no golden rule when it comes to campaign continuity, but it appears that advertisers are adopting two weighting approaches – either front-loading for shorter campaigns or pulsing for longer campaigns,” Buchwalter said. “The conclusions from this AdRelevance Intelligence Report support the fact that the online advertising market is still in its infancy, and has a way to go before analysts can accurately determine what constitutes an effective and successful online ad campaign. We’ll know things are changing when more companies commit to larger, longer and more targeted online campaigns.”

Definitions
Impressions: The number of times an ad is rendered for viewing. One impression is equivalent to one opportunity to see an ad.
Genre: Exclusive groups of sites similar in content and function.

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