"Click-through rates are a misleading statistic," said Scot McLernon, executive vice president of sales at MarketWatch. "They aren't indicative of raised awareness of consumer interest."
On a conference call with analysts, DoubleClick CEO Kevin Ryan said MarketWatch's move is a sign of things to come. "This is a leading trend I think we'll see throughout the industry," he said. The idea is to get advertisers to look at the Internet as a passive medium, where branding is as important as interaction.
Now that click-through rates are dropping, "the online publisher is getting pummeled," he said. "They're being measured to a degree that no other medium is and held responsible for performance of ad campaigns to a degree that no other media channel is. The sets of expectations placed on online publishers are irrational."
Yeehaa, maybe there's hope after all.
