DoubleClick which claims to be the leading provider of marketing tools for advertisers, direct marketers and web publishers has announced results of its Ad Serving Trend Report, which will be released on a quarterly basis. The results show click-through rates on rich media ads to be six times higher than non-rich media ads. The data also shows click-through rates on the recently published IAB size ads marginally higher than non-IAB size ads. The click-through rate is one of the measures used to determine the effectiveness of online advertising.

DoubleClick data shows that while the total number of impressions served by DoubleClick has held steady during the past year, with 56 billion ads served in May 2001 and 55 billion in May 2002, the click-through rate has increased significantly from 0.6 per cent to 0.8 per cent respectively, an increase of almost 35 per cent. For the first five months of 2002, the click-through rate on DoubleClick served advertising has held constant at 0.8 per cent (fluctuating between 0.78 per cent and 0.83 per cent).

DoubleClick's ad serving data reveals a major variance in the click- through rates of rich media ads (2.4 per cent), which is six times higher than non- rich media ads (0.4 per cent). On average 20 per cent of the two billion ads that DoubleClick serves on a daily basis, are rich media.

Of the total rich media ads served by DoubleClick, more than 30 per cent are Flash, and other popular rich media types include Unicast and Eyeblaster. DoubleClick is continuing to see 20 per cent month-to-month growth in the usage of its Rich Media Templates, which make trafficking of rich media ads as easy as trafficking a standard gif image.

Last July DoubleClick released a study, conducted by Diameter, its former research division, that found that Flash increased branding metrics by 71 per cent for three different-sized ads measured, demonstrating the branding power of richer media.

Although DoubleClick served more than 8,000 different ad sizes in May 2002, the percentage of ads that adhere to the IAB's voluntary Interactive Marketing Unit ad formats has grown from 3.4 per cent of DoubleClick served ads in September 2001 to a current average of 5.5 per cent. Of the static ads served by DoubleClick there is a marginal difference between the click-through rates of the ads that adhere to the IAB formats (0.5 per cent) and those that do not (0.4 per cent).



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