NEW YORK: DoubleClick, a leading provider of marketing tools for advertisers, direct marketers and web publishers, has announced results of its third quarter Ad Serving Trend Report based on more than 144 billion advertisements from thousands of clients. The data reveals that 'online advertising' continues to prove its effectiveness for marketers. The majority of 'online ads' are now targeted and rich media usage has increased. In addition, the data shows that the click-through rates have remained constant whereas view-through rates have increased.

Some of the highlights of the report are as follows:

Marketers show continued sophistication in planning and creative: The data reveals that over 73 per cent of all campaigns incorporated some form of targeting criteria in the third quarter. The fact that only one quarter of all advertisements served are run-of-network, attests to a continued sophistication in the online planning process. Furthermore, 'keyword' and 'key value' remain the most common type of targeting used by advertisers with 82 per cent of targeted ads. This includes both 'keywords' on search engines served by DoubleClick and 'content targeting' on specific sites. Marketers have used geographic targeting in 12 per cent of all targeted ads and targeting by 'time of day' is now three per cent of all targeted ads served.

Rich media continues to grow in importance for marketers: According to the data, 'rich media' usage has grown by 34 per cent from the first quarter to the third quarter. In the third quarter nearly 25 per cent of all advertisements served by DoubleClick were 'rich media'. 'Rich media' has been proven to have higher response rates and greater branding impact than the 'static banners'. Average click-through rates for 'rich media' held constant at 2.7 per cent in the third quarter as compared to 2.5 per cent in the first quarter, while click-through rates for 'non-rich media' declined from 0.4 per cent in the first quarter to 0.27 per cent in the third quarter.

Marketers should also place importance on view-through rates : As a result of better planning and more dynamic creatives, average click-through rates remained constant at around 0.69 per cent in the second and third quarters, compared to 0.7 per cent in the first quarter, indicating an increasing maturation of the industry. In addition, view-through rates - which assess users who convert within 30 days of seeing an advertisement, but do not click on a banner - have risen from 0.36 per cent in the first quarter to 0.51 per cent in the third quarter. This translates to five consumers per thousand who respond to an advertisement that they do not click on. As a result, marketers who use click-throughs as the only response metric, are missing these conversions.