Banner ads don’t work. Of course they do.
That’s pretty much where the argument lies. Popular Web sites are chock full of paid banners, and the people who place them are in their offices crunching numbers to determine the return on investment, which is one of the more imperfect sciences.
Here’s what Alan Wolk has to say on the matter:
We’re still judging banners by click-through rates. Or using the negative click-through rate as proof that banners don’t work. We know that click-through shouldn’t matter, that banners pretty much serve to drive awareness and that no matter how much they move and dance and jiggle, no one’s going to click on them because they’re too busy doing whatever it was they originally went online to do.
But we are not the ones controlling ad budgets. And the people who are controlling ad budgets still view click-through rates as the Holy Grail and they judge both their agencies and the state of digital advertising on their vicissitudes.
