Maybe more creative like this will sort out the UK's woefully low average CTRs!
Staff Blogs
Archive June 2009
Click through rate on UK banner advertising amongst lowest in EuropeJune 30, 2009 by Mike Teasdale
This month DoubleClick published a useful benchmark of online advertising performance rates across all activity in 2008. This is pretty much the most solid data you'll ever see on display advertising performance, based according to DoubleClick on: "hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions."
It's a useful set of benchmarks showing for instance variations in click rates by size and format of ads. The data is also split by geography - which shows some fairly disappointing results for the UK.
The table below shows the average click through rate across all formats (static image, flash, video) for the main economies in Europe, plus the United States. (The DoubleClick report has worldwide performance data for twenty nine countries).
| Country Overall Click-through Rate | |
| Spain | 0.14% |
| Germany | 0.13% |
| France | 0.12% |
| Italy | 0.12% |
| United States | 0.10% |
| United Kingdom | 0.08% |
This is really disappointing - and not just for the online advertising industry. As the Guardian recently pointed out, the British newspaper industry is also desperately hoping for a renaissance from online advertising.
So why the poor performance. Probably no single reason, but possible reasons would be:
- banner fatigue - advertising creative not being refreshed often enough
- lower percentage of inventory going on larger sizes / more static formats
- larger percentage of media going out across networks which tend to deliver a lower CPC
- more brand advertising versus direct response campaigns
Any more ideas anyone?
Firefox grows European market share, whilst UK lags behindJune 30, 2009 by Mike Teasdale
Today’s launch of Firefox 3.5 is the latest shot in the long struggle for domination in the browser market.
The data below – from AT Internet Institute - shows that Firefox has steadily been growing its market share in Europe, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer. Disappointingly for Microsoft, Internet Explorer’s market share actually dropped in March, coinciding with the long-awaited launch of IE 8.
The same AT Internet research, from April 2009 shows the stark differences in the popularity of Firefox around Europe. Of the five major European economies, the UK shows the lowest penetration of Firefox with 17% market share – compared with 30% in France and 42% in Germany.
This competition is driving some genuine innovation in the browser market, which is great to see. Compare and contrast with the situation around email, where Microsoft is lazily exploiting Outlook’s monopoly position to resist innovation and ignore web standards.
Japanese obsessions continueJune 28, 2009 by Dhiren
Most people that know me well know that I have a growing obsession with Japanese stuff. Tumblr have recently re-jigged their search functionality and now you get this lovely digital—and rather square—collage for each and every search result.
We like!
One of my sweet finds are below, it’s a diagram detailing how the smooth criminal shoes were made.
Courtesy of Gizmodo JP
Similar ramblings:
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-27June 27, 2009 by Mark
- waiting for the onslaught of poor taste #mj jokes to start circulating the office today #
- In wimbledon for a meeting. Tourists happily snapping pics of "centre court", the shopping centre… #
- Waiting to see the fall out from http://fixoutlook.org/ when @msofficeus wakes up #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-27June 27, 2009 by Mark
- waiting for the onslaught of poor taste #mj jokes to start circulating the office today #
- In wimbledon for a meeting. Tourists happily snapping pics of "centre court", the shopping centre… #
- Waiting to see the fall out from http://fixoutlook.org/ when @msofficeus wakes up #
If I was a greetings card...June 26, 2009 by pibbers
....I'd like to have come from bumble ink.
Another year. Another fire hazard.
At least you still have your pride...
Not only a beautiful illustartion style but also cheeky.
Too cute!
If I was a greetings card...June 26, 2009 by pibbers
....I'd like to have come from bumble ink.Another year. Another fire hazard.At least you still have your pride...
Not only a beautiful illustartion style but also cheeky.
Too cute!
WordJune 26, 2009 by Ellie
Sometimes our weekly breakfast club ends in plain silliness. I just had to share the result of this repurposing / recycling exercise. Meet Webby’s hip hop cat. 
Australia – an apologyJune 24, 2009 by Mike Teasdale
When I wrote our last company newsletter I added in a throwaway line about Google Wave:
Meanwhile Google Wave looks genuinely awesome, the best thing to
come out of Australia since... er... anyway it makes Microsoft Exchange
look very last century.
If I’d thought about this for more than a couple of seconds I should have realised that some thin-skinned Australians would take offence. Sure enough, our receptionist is now not talking to me – and is putting through endless calls from recruitment consultants. Worse still, we’ve had a very long email from an antipodean who took particular offence to my racist comment:
To whom it may concern,
I am a potential client of Harvest Digital and I recently received the below email from your company. However I do not understand the need to mention Australia and its lack of successful exports!!
I find it incredibly offensive and hurtful that your company represents such a standpoint.
I would like to let you know about some of the successful things Australia has brought to the world,
1. The Bionic Ear - Melbourne University professor made history in 1978 by inventing the world's first bionic ear.
2. The Black Box Flight recorder - Dr. David Warren from Melbourne invented the first black box flight recorder in 1958.
3. The Cow Fan, During summer temperatures in Australia can soar into the fifties, too hot for most European farm animals. Luckily the ever ingenious Australian farmers have come up with a solution to cool our cows.
4. Meat Flavored Water: Inventor Andrew started marketing meat and vegetable flavored bottled water to canine connoisseurs in December 2003. It's like a sports drink for dogs he said and put his Dog Plus K-9 Water on sale across Australia in flavors ranging from bacon and beef to liver, chicken and corn. A 600ml bottle will set you back $2.95
5. Viagra Oysters - Oysters have long been known as an aphrodisiac, but NSW oyster farmer George thought he could do better and started lacing his oysters with Viagra hoping for lucrative markets in Asia where many men are obsessed with all sorts of ways to increase their virility. ( To the point where they will drink urine from tigers and rhinoceros for perceived benefits.) Unfortunately, no matter how good the idea may have sounded, there are always a few whingers out there, and so the NSW Food Safety authority says it is illegal and breaches the NSW Food Act and also Pfizer was not happy with their trademarked name being used in this way and threatened with legal action, but George reckons that countries outside Australia have different regulations so even if they are illegal in Australia he still sells them overseas, and change the name to get Pfizer off his back.
From the above points it is clear that Australia is a great nation and that we in fact contribute greatly to the world on all different levels from Science to Bovine welfare.
I would like to note that your email asked me “how’s it going????†…….Well as a result of this attack on our proud nation I am willing to say that I am not so good and I will be in touch with more Aussie great inventions in the near future.
Regards
Mac
Well Mac (and Mel!), all I can say is sorry! The thrust of my argument was to say how good Google Wave was and not to put down Australia. Now that I have the facts in front of me, I can see that Australian ingenuity clearly out-classes second-rate British inventions like television, the telephone and the internet.
Next time I’ll stick to being rude to the French…