According to the updated Natural Born Clickers research completed by Comscore and StarCom “The percentage of Internet users who click on display ads has dropped from 32 percent to 16 percent in just two years, with only 8 percent of people on the Web now accounting for 85 percent of all clicks”

The research attempts to position the Click Through Rate as an unreliable measure of the true value of display ads.  The logic goes that a display impression can move attitudes towards a brand and ultimately sales without the Click.

I’m still a skeptic.  Display ads are a form of direct marketing and are best used to move a consumers into action.  Whether that action is a sale, a lead, captured consumer data, or enagement the display ad is best optimized to deliver a click.  With less and less consumers clicking on ads we’ve got to get more and more creative if we are to move that consumer into action.