Relevance Key to Increasing Display Ad Dwell Rate

By BrianWSelden On December 21, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Marketers know rich media and video ads can offer a more engaging user experience than static banner ads. But within these dynamic display ad formats, advertisers can foster even greater user engagement by making their ads more relevant to viewers through the use of dynamic creative optimization and the syncing of multiple ad units on a page into a single, cohesive experience.

Many believe internet users have become desensitized to standard banner ads. Not surprisingly, advertisers look to more dynamic display ad formats such as rich media and video to capture user intent and boost engagement.

Among those formats, video ads might be the most engaging ad format so far. MediaMind (formerly Eyeblaster) found video kept users engaged 5.2 seconds longer, on average, than rich media ads. In addition, the portion of users who sought initial ad engagement was higher for video ads (6.3%) than for non-video rich media ad units (5.2%). Both metrics were calculated based on a sample of impressions worldwide collected from Q3 2010 to Q2 2011.

MediaMind used dwell rate and dwell duration to measure user engagement. Dwell rate measures the percentage of rich media impressions users intentionally engaged with by touch, interaction or click. Dwell duration is the length of time the user remains exposed to an ad after first engaging with it. To further ensure the validity of dwell rate, all interactions lasting less than 1 second were removed.

Though video can offer a more engaging experience than rich media alone, the study also found marketers can increase performance for both display types by increasing overall ad relevancy.