One of the big stories in the tech world today is the release of Internet Explorer 9 (after just a year of beta testing!), and the subsequent buzz that its tracking opt out clause will include. While it is tough to determine the scope of how this will affect advertisers (as it is an unknown about how many users will actually use the feature), Microsoft clearly hopes the functionality will allow them to reposition themselves as the dominant browser on the market, despite IE9’s inability to run on the ever-popular Windows XP.
Curious as to how the new version of Internet Explorer will affect the landscape of online advertising, Chitika Insights took a look at the Click-Through Rates of various versions of the browser using a sample of US and Canadian traffic. While Insights has looked at the tendencies of tech-forward internet users, and the common idea is that early adopters of a new technology are tougher to advertise to, for Internet Explorer 9, this does not seem to be the case early on:
Rather than having a significantly lower CTR than its older counterparts, the ad susceptibility of IE 9 users is relatively similar to those of IE 7 and 8 users. Compared to IE 6, however, it is far lower, and less than half of people who continue to run versions even older than IE 6. As IE 6 users continue to (slowly) convert to later versions of Internet Explorer, it will be interesting to see if they bring their click-happiness with them.
1 comment