The Case For CPM (And Other Digital Media Learnings)

From a July survey of 6,000 people by DoubleClick, via November 20th's NYT:

About a third of consumers sometimes click on banner advertisements on the Web. But twice as many consumers sometimes respond to such ads indirectly, avoiding clicking on them but later visiting the Web sites advertised...

DoubleClick makes its living serving ads, and obviously has an interest in making the case for all those ads that people don't click on.  Nevertheless, it's useful to have some numbers here on the relative impact of CPM-based online advertising.

Here's the study:

http://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge_central/documents/RESEARCH/dc_touchpointsIV_0611.pdf

Surprisingly, the Times omitted mention of the word "sometimes" that DoubleClick had used in the study to describe the behaviors above.  So, as I read these results, folks are twice as likely to sometimes visit an advertiser's site after seeing its web ad as they are to sometimes click on the ad itself.

The rest of the study has some very interesting findings about the relative importance of different media channels to different stages of purchase decision processes, across different industries.  It's worth a look.