Tales From the Digital Side

I ain’t measuring it no more! I know, You probably just got comfortable with using it to compare your digital campaigns. But the truth is, click-through rate (CTR) has little to do with the effectiveness of your campaign. If it is your sole measurement of your campaigns, you are probably not making the best decisions.

I’ve stressed the importance of tracking beyond the click in the past and written about the research that supports the uses of banner ads as a branding tool. The longer I do this, the more strongly I feel that CTR is an outdated metric that tells only a small part of the story. If you really want to know what is working you must track actions (usually resume submissions) taken on your site (this is often called post-click tracking).

The web isn’t so new anymore. Most of us can find a web site, especially one for a specific company. And, when we are online, we are doing stuff - checking email, checking sports scores (Go Sox!), reading news, etc - who has time to click on a banner? Well, on average only 0.10-0.20% of people (this is the average CTR). However, a much larger percentage see the ad, and later go to the company’s web site.

As a rule of thumb 60-70% of the resumes submitted based on a campaign are submitted by people who never clicked on your ad. If you don’t have the measurement tools in place to track this, you are flying blind. If you base your decisions on CTR alone, you may dump some of your best performing sites, as CTR is not always directly related to conversion rate (or resume submission rate).

The process of setting up this type of data collection is quite easy, although it may require the cooperation of your ATS system. You’ll need to use a third-party ad server to serve your ads and you’ll need to coordinate action/post-click tagging of important pages like the resume confirmation page. I have run in to several ATS systems that for some reason put unnecessary obstacles in the way. However, be assured it is a relatively easy process and DO NOT TAKE “NO” FROM YOUR ATS. It is your right to get proper campaign data. In fact, if you are working on an RFP for an ATS, I’d make the installation of third-party ads tags a requirement.

So, happy data gathering! I’d love to hear stories of how you are tracking the post-click activity of your campaigns!