Internet advertising effectiveness

The effect of design on click-through rates for banner ads

Helen Robinson, Anna Wysocka and Chris Hand
Kingston University

Online advertising has experienced phenomenal growth since its inception in 1994. This empirical study investigates the impact of seven creative characteristics of banner ads on the effectiveness of online advertising using a multiple regression model. A random sample of 209 banner ads was drawn from a sampling frame of advertisers, provided by an advertising agency specialising in internet advertising for the gaming industry. The findings of this study are broadly consistent with past research into online advertising efficiency, indicating that the creative characteristics of effective banner ads in the online gaming arena include: a larger size, absence of promotional incentives and the presence of information about casino games. In contrast, banner features such as animation, action phrase and presence of company brand or logo were ineffective in generating clickthroughs. Contrary to expectations, long messages on banners were associated with higher click-through rates.

Introduction
Since the first banner ads appeared in 1994, the internet advertising industry has experienced exceptional growth. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) heralded 2003 as the most successful year in association history, recording full-year revenue as almost US$7.3 billion (IAB 2003). Existing academic research encompasses a broad spectrum of studies on internet advertising effectiveness measured by direct response and branding metrics. The few studies that have included click-through rate (CTR) as a measure of online advertising effectiveness have examined the relationships between CTR and a series of factors such as web user motives, audience targeting, exposure frequency, copy content and a limited number of design elements of banner ads. Advances in technology have made
International Journal of Advertising, 26(4), pp. 527541 2007 Advertising Association Published by the World Advertising Research Center, www.warc.com

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online gambling one of the fastest-growing industries in recent years. While in 1999 there were only 300 online casinos worldwide, this number had grown to 1800 by 2004 (Constable 2003; Catty 2004). This empirical investigation broadens the existing academic knowledge of online advertising efficiency and, more specifically, contributes to the understanding of which creative elements of banner ads impact clickthroughs. In addition, this study is the first to examine internet advertising effectiveness in the context of the online gaming industry. It is not the intention of this study to enhance the effectiveness of the advertising of online casinos. Rather, it centres on whether the effects of banner design on click-through differ between this market and others. Online gambling is an example of an industry where those who participate online may not have considered participating offline. This contrasts with most other examples of e-commerce (e.g. purchasing groceries, clothes, books). Hence, an online casino has to build credibility from its banner ads and website alone. Consequently, there might be reason to believe that different banner characteristics would increase effectiveness more than those previously found in other industries. Nevertheless, given ongoing concerns and much recent debate over the growth of the gambling sector and relaxed restrictions on broadcast advertising (from September 2007 in the UK, for example), an understanding of the effectiveness of online advertising is of interest to both the casinos and their regulators.

Previous research
Internet advertising, and in particular banner effectiveness, in this relatively new medium has received considerable attention from academics and practitioners. The study of online advertising effectiveness has been conducted through two alternative paradigms. The first, widely used in academic research, argues that banner adverts should be considered as a form of marketing communication used to raise brand awareness. The second, predominantly used in empirical research, contends that the internet is a direct marketing medium, and hence a banner ad is likened to a coupon in print media. Accordingly, the success of the banner ad should be measured through the return rate or CTR for the internet (Chandon et al. 2003).

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Dreze and Hussherr (2003) found that internet users avoided looking at ads while online, and hypothesised that internet users might perceive banner ads in their peripheral vision. Similarly, Janiszewski (1998) claimed that peripheral vision allows individuals to recognise objects that are located outside their focal point of attention. Several studies suggest that click-through effectiveness may depend on web user motives. Briggs and Hollis (1997) argue that the primary factor in generating click-throughs is the nature of the audience and what the inherent interest in the product category may hold for them. Further studies have concluded that banner ads that complement the users web motives may be more effective (Raman & Leckenby 1998; Rodgers & Thorson 2000; Rodgers 2002; Danaher & Mullarkey 2003). Practitioners and academics agree that while repetition reduces clickthroughs, it builds brands (Broussard 2000; Dynamic Logic, 2000; Gugel 2001; Chatterjee et al. 2003; Danaher & Mullarkey 2003; Dreze & Hussherr 2003). A considerable body of research has demonstrated that successful targeting of online ads improves CTR (Briggs & Hollis 1997; Sherman & Deighton 2001; Chandon et al. 2003; Chatterjee et al. 2003). Relevance of the advertisement to the site may also be a determinant of click-through rates. Chang-Hoan (2003) found that those more involved in a product were more likely to click through, but also that users who were interested in the site and shown advertisements for products and services related to those on the site also achieved a higher click-through rate. The relationship between the banner size and CTR is conflicting. Baltas (2003) found that bigger ads are more effective in attracting attention and (hence more likely to) trigger response. Chandon et al. (2003) found positive interactions on five banner sizes, although no significant difference between the two bigger sizes. In contrast, Dreze and Hussherr (2003) tested the standard banner against two other banner sizes and found the smaller ads performed just as well as the large ones, in accordance with Cho (2003) who found no significant relationship between banner size and clicking. Comparably, Rettie et al. (2004) established that banner size impacted click-through and post-impression measures differently. Research on the impact of price and promotions on click-throughs has revealed that none of these various stimuli (gift, rebate or free offers) has a direct effect on CTR (Chtourou et al. 2002; Baltas 2003; Rettie et al.

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2004). Chtourou et al. (2002) found that the mention of price reduced direct response. Rettie et al. (2004) discovered that banners which mentioned neither price nor promotional offers had the most effect on clickthrough and post-impression rates. Conflicting evidence exists on the impact of branded banners on clickthrough rates. Research conducted by Baltas (2003) and Chandon et al. (2003) revealed a negative impact and suggests that unbranded banners might stimulate greater curiosity, leading to click-through. Similarly, Dahlen (2001) found that familiar (as opposed to unfamiliar) brands received double the click-through. In contrast, Briggs and Hollis (1997) argued that the practice of running unbranded banners ... surely runs counter to the concept of brand building through ad banner exposure, a view supported by Dynamic Logic (2002). Dreze and Hussherr (2003) concluded that, in terms of artistic influences, audiences were most affected by the banner message rather than how the message was conveyed. They concluded that artistic execution overall had little effect on both click-throughs and traditional memorybased effectiveness measures, with the exception of animation, which influenced aided brand recall. Baltas (2003) found that banners with lengthy messages and multiple frames (animation) received fewer clicks. He reasoned that these two factors increase the complexity of an ad and hence have a negative effect on the viewers attitude towards and response to the banner. It has also been suggested that animated banners may be more difficult to remember than static ones (Burke et al. 2005). On the other hand, Chandon et al. (2003) and Lothia et al. (2003) concluded that animation improved click-through rates. Overall, existing research on the relationship between creative characteristics of banners and CTR reveals conflicting results. An early study by Hofacker and Murphy (1998) suggests that creative factors tend to increase response rates. The inclusion of clichd messages such as click here or click now, along with animations and cryptic messages, was suggested as methods of increasing response rates. More recently, evidence has shown little support for a positive relationship between artistic variables and direct response (Dreze & Hussherr 2003). Moore et al. (2005) indicate that there may be a conflict between getting a user to attend to a banner while maintaining a favourable attitude towards it. Their research suggests that the use of incongruent colour schemes in banners compared

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to the rest of the website results in more attention being given to that banner, but that the attitude towards the banner was more negative than towards a banner more congruent with its website.

Research design
The aim of this empirical study is to investigate the impact of seven design characteristics of banner ads on the click-through rate using data from 209 real banner advertisements hosted on a single website in the context of online gaming. The research builds upon past research in the area of online advertising efficiency and, in particular, a study conducted by Baltas (2003). The study investigates relationships between the CTR and the seven design elements of banner ads discussed earlier: banner size, message length, promotional incentive, animation, action phrase, company brand/logo and casino games. The design element games is also included to reflect the focus on the online gaming industry. This study examines the impact of creative elements of banner ads on CTR, the direct response metric used for measuring internet advertising effectiveness. Data were provided by an advertising agency (specialising in internet advertising for the gaming industry) that employs the Adtrack system, which records impressions, clicks and CTR for each banner on a daily basis. The database comprised an inventory of 70 advertisers and approximately 1500 banners that had appeared between 2001 and 2004. A sample of 14 advertisers and their 209 banners was extracted. The original inventory of 70 advertisers was filtered to 58 advertisers who ran campaigns for at least a three-month period. In order to reduce the sample to a manageable size, 14 advertisers were selected randomly from the list of 58 remaining advertisers and, finally, the CTR data for the resulting 209 banners from the 14 advertisers for a three-month period were extracted, forming the data set. The three-month period was chosen to ensure a substantial database for the ensuing statistical analysis and also to control for the moderating impact of the length of an ad campaign on the CTR. Click-through rates provide the marketer with considerable advantages, as click-throughs record voluntary behaviour in the actual medium environment. Furthermore, the data are collected unobtrusively; are based on observed behaviour rather than self-reporting; and are free from researcher

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bias and recorded on a census of consumers rather than a sample (Chatterjee et al. 2003). A standard multiple regression model was used to examine the relationship between the dependent variable (CTR) and the seven creative banner characteristics to determine which had a significant effect on CTR.

Research findings
Prior to running the regression, the CTR variable was found to be highly skewed, with few banners obtaining high rates of click-through (the histogram is shown in Figure 1). An initial run of the regression model produced non-normal errors. In order to overcome this problem, CTR was transformed by taking logarithms (a common remedial measure for nonnormal errors in econometrics, for example see Gujarati (1995)). The source website employs a total of seven distinct sizes of banner that were included in the original model as six dummy variables (the standard

Figure 1: Histogram of click-through rates

200

150

Frequency

100

50

0 0.00%

5.00% CTR

10.00%

15.00%

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banner size, 468 60 pixels, being the base category). One dummy was dropped due to a collinearity problem. A more conventional approach might be to include banner height and width in the model (as one reviewer suggested). However, given the design of the source website, it was impossible to separate the effects of banner size and placement. A banner of a particular size can appear only in a given place on the web page (e.g. long, thin banners appear only at the top and the bottom of the page). Consequently, it was not possible to separate the effect of placement and size; therefore generalising the results to other banner sizes would be potentially misleading. The effect of message length was also captured by a series of dummy variables. Again, at first glance, the number of words would be the most obvious measure to use. It was decided to code message length as a series of dummies for two reasons. First, the message lengths were clustered around a few lengths. Second, the effect of adding a word or two to the message on click-through is likely to be small; larger differences are likely to be found between messages of different lengths. These differences would be more apparent from a comparison of the dummy variable coefficients. An alternative approach would be to use the total number of words on the banner, which would permit testing for polynomial relationships, as long as there was sufficient variation in message length across banners. The effects of the presence of a logo, a promotional offer, the use of a clichd phrase and whether the games offered were listed on the banner were captured by a series of dummy variables. The study also investigated whether animation on banners attracts greater click-through. Rather than use another dummy variable, the number of transitions between frames was used (i.e. 0 = static, 1 = two frames or 1 transition, and so on). The multiple regression model takes the form of the following equation: log CTR = b0 + b1 Bsize 120 120 + b2 Bsize 120 240 + b3 Bsize 175 60 + b4 Bsize 234 60 + b5 Bsize 360 240 + b6 Smsg + b7 Mmsg + b8 Lmsg + b9 Frames + b10 Promotion + b11 Clich + b12 Logo + b13 Game + e

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where: log CTR is the dependent variable, b0 is the constant, b1 to b13 are the regression coefficients for the corresponding independent variables as follows: Bsize 120 60 Bsize 360 240 = banner size dummies (base category = standard banner size 468 60) Smsg = short message (15 words) dummy Mmsg = medium-length message (610 words) dummy Lmsg = long message (1115 words) dummy (base category = very long messages, 16+ words) Frames = number of transitions if animated (= 0 if static) Promotion = promotional incentive dummy Clich = stereotypical action phrase dummy Logo = company brand/logo dummy Game = casino games offered at an online casino dummy e = residual. Inspection of a histogram of the residuals, a plot of the residuals against predicted CTR (shown in Figures 2 and 3 respectively) and collinearity diagnostics (shown in Table 1) suggested that the assumptions of normality, homoscedasticity and no multicollinearity were met. The model explains 68% of the variation in log CTR. As the dependent variable was transformed, the regression coefficients can not be directly interpreted as the effect of a unit change in the independent variable on CTR. Instead, the effect of each variable is calculated using (antilog b) 1, which gives a measure of the magnitude of the variables effect on CTR, shown in the magnitude column of Table 1 (Gujarati 1995).

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Figure 2: Residuals histogram

40

30

Frequency

20

10

0 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 Regression standardised residual

Figure 3: Scatterplot of dependent variable against residuals (heteroscedasticity test)

3 Regression standardised predicted value

2 3 2 1 0 1 2 3 4 Regression studentised deleted (press) residual

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Table 1: Regression results

Description (Constant) Banner 120 120 Banner 120 240 Banner 175 60 Banner 234 60 Banner 360 240 Short Mgs (15W) Med Mgs (610W) Long Mgs (1115W) Animation Promo incentive Clich Logo/brand Games b 0.111 0.296 0.339 0.414 0.289 1.784 0.526 0.438 0.635 0.061 0.792 0.016 0.148 0.361 Std error 0.293 0.168 0.199 0.198 0.165 0.181 0.252 0.178 0.169 0.036 0.113 0.114 0.199 0.123 t 0.381 1.762 1.701 2.089 1.753 9.861 2.084 2.454 3.748 1.698 7.012 0.141 0.740 2.924 Sig. 0.704 0.080 0.091 0.038 0.081 0.000 0.038 0.015 0.000 0.091 0.000 0.888 0.460 0.004 Magnitude (%) 10.506 25.621 28.752 33.900 25.099 495.362 40.904 35.467 47.006 5.918 54.706 1.613 13.757 43.476 Tol. VIF

0.828 0.813 0.823 0.830 0.584 0.441 0.341 0.434 0.858 0.824 0.864 0.773 0.674

1.208 1.230 1.215 1.215 1.713 2.268 2.933 2.306 1.166 1.218 1.157 1.294 1.485

R2 Adj. R2 F

0.681 0.659 31.668 (sig. = 0.000)

Note: Tol. = tolerance; VIF = variance inflation factor

Compared to the standard banner size (468 60 pixels) only two banner sizes have a significant impact on CTR (at the 5% level). Small banners (175 60 pixels) receive 33.9% fewer clicks than standard banners. In contrast, large banners (360 240 pixels) receive 495.4% more clicks than standard banners. However, it should be remembered that the size measure used for this study also captures a banners position on the webpage, hence not all of the increased click-through can be attributed to the size of the banner. Describing or listing the games available on the site also significantly increases CTR by 43.5%. It allows the website user to find a site that appeals to them more quickly as it reduces the time spent searching for a particular game. The regression model also produces some surprising results. Banners with short, medium and long messages receive significantly fewer clicks than very long messages. This result may reflect the finding that larger banners obtain a higher CTR; long messages tend to appear on larger banners (if only because they fit). Promotional incentives generate significantly fewer clicks than banners without such incentives. Apparently, the

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offer of free bets is not enough to entice online gamblers to try a particular online casino; indeed, such offers would seem to have the opposite effect than was intended. The use of clichd phrases has no significant effect on click-through rates; neither does the presence of logos or brand emblems, perhaps reflecting the lack of brand awareness in this subset of the gambling industry.

Conclusions and recommendations

This research indicates that the design elements of effective banner ads include: a larger size, long message, absence of promotional incentives and the presence of information about casino games. In contrast, creative characteristics established as being ineffective in attracting a direct response include: stereotypical action phrases and the company brand/logo. These findings are generally consistent with past research in the area of online advertising effectiveness. The largest banner ads are more effective in generating click-through than the smaller-sized banners, replicating findings by Baltas (2003), Chandon et al. (2003) and Chtourou et al. (2002), and supporting the industry mantra that bigger is better (Briggs, 2001a; Dynamic Logic, 2004). However, this study contradicts some earlier findings that banner ads carrying a shorter message are more effective than those with a lengthy message. Animation, on the other hand, demonstrated an insignificant effect on users direct response (at the 5% level), a point of interest to media agencies since animated banners are more costly to produce. Therefore, Baltass (2003) contention that a wordy animated message increases the complexity of the ad, and hence receives a negative response from the audience, receives only partial support. Moreover, the discovery that banners containing no promotional offer attract more attention than those with such incentives, concurs with past studies (Chtourou et al. 2002; Baltas 2003; Rettie et al. 2004). The traditional attention-capturing characteristics of banner ads (such as action phrases and company brand/logo) play an insignificant role in eliciting a direct response. These findings are consistent with previous studies on the response to branded vs non-branded banners (Baltas 2003; Chandon et al. 2003). While some commentators have suggested that

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unbranded banners stimulate greater curiosity, hence generating more clicks, others have argued that unbranded banners contradict the concept of brand building through banner exposure (Briggs & Hollis 1997). The evidence from the current study indicates that the presence of games in a banner ad positively impacts on CTR. Clearly, online gamblers find this aspect of the communication important to their decision making, and thus banner ads for the online gaming sector should comprise casino games in order to increase direct response. The findings of this study have strong implications for online communications; the evidence stresses the importance of fresh and innovative message tactics, given the ineffectiveness of the more conventional design tools employed to stimulate user interest. These results also suggest that the effectiveness of banner ad campaigns for online gaming (as measured by CTR) is governed by the same principles of artistic execution as those found in other, non-gambling-related sectors of the internet. This study used CTR to evaluate the effectiveness of banner ads. This metric is one of the oldest methods of evaluating the success of online advertising campaigns and is an appropriate tool for assessing direct marketing objectives. However, it has been criticised for not including the additional effects of online advertising such as branding (Briggs 2001b) and may be considered by some as a limitation of this study. Further research could investigate the branding-building effects of banner ads. Another limitation of the study is that it included a sample of banner ads hosted on a single website, namely an online gaming portal. Future research could extend the scope of the research to a number of websites.

Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to participants at the 34th European Marketing Academy Conference, Milan, the 2005 Academy of Marketing Conference, Dublin, the editor and two anonymous referees for helpful comments.

References
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About the authors

Helen Robinson is a principal lecturer in the School of Marketing at Kingston University, UK. Previously, she worked in the advertising industry, for JWT in London. Her current research interests include advertising and media planning, marketing communications and internet marketing. Her work has been published in a number of marketing journals. Anna Wysocka graduated from Kingston Business School with a masters degree in marketing, moving on to follow a career as a practitioner in the field. Chris Hand is a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Marketing, Kingston Business School. His research interests include the effects of eCommerce on consumer behaviour, the entertainment industries and the

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application of quantitative methods in marketing. His research has appeared in journals such as the Journal of Brand and Product Management, Environment and Planning A and the Journal of Cultural Economics. Address correspondence to: Helen Robinson, Kingston Business School, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, KT2 7LB, UK. Email: h.r.robinson@kingston.ac.uk

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