CrowdScience has released new data about clicks: who does click on ads, who doesn’t and why. The big surprise is that there are a lot of people who have never clicked on a digital advertisement. Only 58% of users between 15 and 24 years old have clicked on ad. That is the lowest percentage for the age based demographics. While the lack of a steady income seems to be the easy explanation, the numbers steadily track upwards with the user’s age, which hints that there is something else besides income at work.
The survey offered a host of reason for why ads were not clicked: virus fear; not wanting to navigate away from current page; lack of trust about truthfulness of the ad; irrelevancy; spam fear; failure to notice; or a lack of clickable options. Shockingly, the leading explanation across all the age groups and for women is fear of a computer virus. The main explanation offered by men was not wanting to navigate away from the page, although virus fear was the second most cited explanation. The other explanations that signal a lack of trust are also front running explanations. The Internet marketing firm needs to understand that the industry suffers from a crisis of trust and that ads need to be coupled with a campaign to establish trust. An easy way to do this is engagement in a conversation. Comments involving the brand’s engagement of those comments on Facebook or other social media sites are great ways to build trust. A brand’s penchant for quality customer service is also important.
The data also shows that the older the viewer of the ad, the more likely he is to click on it. Except for viewers in the 55+ age group, ads are more likely to sponsor some other action than a click. Except for the eldest, all groups have a higher rate of researching the ad than clicking through the ad. This should help remind the Internet marketing firm that clicks should not be the only metric of success. In fact, sometimes the lack of a click still produces the desired effect of shopping for the product. The method is just sometimes round about. Ads that are designed to encourage external research may be particularly effective at this method of conversion.
