I was on TV yesterday (video here, be nice) talking about Google’s domination, and came up wondering who is still clicking on ads these days. Conventional wisdom used to say that “new users click on ads”, but now that we are all turning into savvy internet veterans with years of surfing under our belts, who still thinks that the results on the right ARE the non-sponsored results?

A new study released this morning came up with a few interesting findings about ads-clickers and tells us that “heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad click”.

The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency, the study shows that heavy clickers are not representative of the general public. In fact, heavy clickers skew towards Internet users between the ages of 25-44 and households with an income under $40,000. Heavy clickers behave very differently online than the typical Internet user, and while they spend four times more time online than non-clickers, their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage. Heavy clickers are also relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers. Further preliminary Starcom data suggests […] shows no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times an ad for that brand was clicked.

Link

If the other 50% are indeed fake clicks then we are headed towards a nice crash of the current Internet monetization system.

Interesting summary of which industries are spending money in online advertising. Figures are US only and should widely differ per country, but it’s an interesting information giving editors an idea of what content should actually net advertising money.

Link (via the bankwatch)

Online advertising picked up 7 percentage points of market share in a single year over offline.

US advertising revenue at 4 big online media companies - Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN - grew by $1.3 billion in Q2, or 42%.

US advertising revenue at 15 big television, newspaper, magazine, radio, and outdoor companies (Time Warner, Viacom, CBS, etc.) shrank by $280 million in Q2, or 3%. […]

Online advertising grew from $3 billion to $4.2 billion (23% share to 30% share) while the offline portion shrank from $9.9 billion to $9.6 billion (77% share to 70% share).

This might be a distorted view. The fact that the 15 biggest television and newspaper companies lost ground does not mean the WHOLE offline pie got smaller. In fact, it seems local medias (who have more clearly delimited communities = more facility to monetize) are growing again. But there is something going on here, despite the fact that users seem to completely ignore online ads according to a recent study.

Link (via Pierre)

Can anybody name a major brand […] that in the last decade has been created primarily through advertising? Nobody. I’ve never met a crowd that could. If you think of companies like Yahoo and Google and Starbucks and Amazon, these companies have been built by experience and by word of mouth. Marketing doesn’t work the way it used to.

Source: Customer Experience Crossroads: Eisenberg on the future of marketing (via Colin Henderson)

I made the announcement on the company’s homepage a while ago, and it is now official. Ballpark is now LIFT lab, and many changes are coming. More people, more services, more events, and some news you probably didn’t expect ;)

I will uncover all the details in the coming weeks, the idea being that everything would be public and set around the end of August.

Welcome to LIFT lab!

An easy way to make a splash this summer if you have a mass product to launch: Skytyping.

“la deuxième vague de consolidation [du milieu de la publicité en ligne] va arriver dans quelques mois pour une raison simple, les grands groupes de publicité traditionnelle ne pourront plus rester à l’écart de la publicité en ligne en terme de technologies et de services sous peine de disparaitre très rapidement au bénéfice des nouveaux acteurs comme Google, Microsoft et Yahoo.

Pascal Rossini

Je crois que c’est clair. Profitions bien de Pascal tant qu’il est encore à Genève, ça ne risque de pas durer très très longtemps ;)

In April 2007 this site attracted 87’909 visitors and 201’945 pageviews. Thanks to all the readers and stay tuned for a major redesign in the coming months.

After radio and magazines, Google moves into the newspaper space, signing a deal “with over 50 papers for print ad auctions”.

Google is slowly locking all the advertising space of this planet, and will soon be the partner of choice for all the Procter&Gamble and Coca-Cola money. (via Geneva Lunch)

Merci de noter la nouvelle adresse:

Ballpark SÃ RL
13 rue Charles Giron
CH-1203 Genève