Sometimes we at Chitika Research forget that we do, in fact, work for an advertising network, and as such have a wealth of data that pertains directly to the business. With that in mind, I’m kicking off a new series on advertising layouts and how they impact the ads’ clickthrough rates.
For this initial study, we took a simple bit of general knowledge – ads above the fold are more effective than ads below – and put our data to finding just how much effect this really has. Over a sample of 22,211,015 impressions, we found that an ad above the fold will have a 44% higher clickthrough rate than one below the fold, all things being equal.
| Clickthrough Rates by Ad Placement: Above vs. Below the Fold | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Impressions | Clicks | CTR | |
| Below Fold | 9,362,053 | 60,918 | 0.651% |
| Above Fold | 12,848,962 | 120,708 | 0.939% |
| Total CTR | 22,211,015 | 181,626 | 0.818% |
| Source: Sample of traffic coming into the Chitika advertising network | |||
The way we came to this conclusion is by comparing the Y-variables of the placements of the advertisements themselves to the height of the page’s viewable area. As viewable area shifts with screen resolution, this method is appropriate across multiple screen sizes. The same pool of advertisements was used for all ads, ensuring an applicable comparison between the above- and below-fold data.
The applications of this data are primarily for website owners and CPM advertisers – having a general modifier for above-the-fold placement should factor into the determining of which ads to place where, and the appropriate pricing for the various ad slots.
Contact
Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com
Interesting research, but I wonder how accurate it is.
Reason, being you are not taking in to account other variables.
One must not conclude based on this info, you would get about 44% more clicks simply by placing above the fold.
I am into internet marketing, in my field, research shows only 4% of the people ever scroll down! Same goes for sales letters.
Tim
How did you define “above the fold”? Is it a half-way point on a page? Or just one screen height? What about an article that is short enough that it’s only one page long? Does that even have a “below” the fold?
I’ve been contemplating whether it would be wiser to always have shorter articles and pages so there is no lower section.
For the purpose of this study, we looked at the vertical location of the ad compared with the viewable area of the screen. All ads marked “above the fold” appeared on the screen with no scrolling whatsoever.