If you have stayed long enough in the media industry, the above wouldn’t sound unfamiliar to you. So are display banners really dead? Without thinking too much, it does seems so with the falling click-through rate (CTR). And with the whole industry still using CTR as a basis of measurement of campaign performance, it’s bad news for publishers, like us.
CTR is a function of total ad impressions and with more people spending more time in the online media, there is an explosion of available ad impressions. Coupled this with the fact that these days people are generally averse to advertisement; more ad impressions, less desire to click on advertisements, a falling CTR is almost certain.
That is one of the core reasons why in recent years, one sees the rise of ad networks and ad exchanges and now even demand side platforms. To be fair, these various options exist to help advertisers maximize their marketing dollars because no one advertiser has the budget to buy in millions or billions or even trillions of ad impressions.
Let’s pause to think – is there no other way to solve this problem?
