Clickthrough Rate Shortcomings in the Mobile App Space
With smartphone interaction occupying such a large portion of time in many people’s days compared to other forms of technology and media, it’s no surprise that the mobile ads market is as competitive as it is. However people are starting to realize that while the content being displayed is the same, how it is displayed and more importantly how the analytics need to be interpreted can vary differently from advertising content meant for traditional desktop viewing methods.
http://appdevelopermagazine.com/2014/2014/10/20/Study-Shows-CTR-is-Inaccurate-to-Measure-Mobile-App-Advertising/
Michael Essany explains in the article above the importance of factoring accidental clicks on a mobile device. Because of a mobile device’s smaller form factor and the tendency of the human finger be to a less-than-precise alternative to the traditional mouse pointer, accidental presses pose much more of an issue than on a desktop view site. Scrolling through a webpage may also unintentionally trigger an ad click as well. It also does not help that mobile ads are placed with small close buttons either. All of these factors contribute to an artificially inflated clickthrough rate which in turn can upset the balance in fair pricing for that ad spot. While CTR has been the defacto gold standard metric in advertisement evaluation, research suggests the usage of SARs or secondary action rates. Actions such as calls or looking up directions constitute action taken in relation to the ads as opposed to CTR which does not account for whether or not action taken past the click was relevant to the advertisement at all.
Results also reveal that the CTR rate of an ad and the SAR rate can vary wildly, often times having no correlation at all. However, advertisements with a higher SAR rate predictably saw a correlation with the amount of people intending to purchase an item or service. Other factors were also identified, such as Store Visitation Lift which corresponds to the ad’s ability to convince the audience to increase store visitation behavior. Metrics such as this were shown to be an even bigger indicator of intent to purchase. The results of this study helps to equip advertisement creators with knowledge in order to create advertisements with higher success rates as well as to inform advertisement companies of new metrics to be aware of when determining the importance and price of advertisements in the mobile space.