All too often ad campaigns are set by advertisers with what seems like little care for timing and location. Planning where the ads will be displayed, which days of the week, and when exactly during the day are all, collectively, an important part of planning since these factors may directly influence the number of clicks received.
Infolinks studied its 2013 US click trends Q1 figures based on a sample of 1 trillion impressions from its 100K publisher network to discover which US state, day of the week and hour of the day performed best in terms of CTR (click through rates).
The US Click Trends:
Best State to Click
The top four CTR states are all located in the Southern part of the United States, including Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama and Louisiana. The 4 states with the lowest CTR rates were scattered across the country with no obvious demographic connection (not that we could discover, anyway!). These included California, Iowa, Georgia and Washington.
While the “been there, done that” California-based visitors click much less than average (-24%), ads in Georgia appear to be more appealing as the click through rates are dramatically higher than the average (+17%)!
Best Day to Click
Ever hear the myth that campaigns shouldn’t drop on Mondays because click-throughs are lower? Guess what: CTRs are lower on Mondays – but not nearly as low as they are on Wednesdays, where CTRs dip down to -1.86%. The surprising peak in CTRs comes on Friday, the day the industry always agreed wouldn’t perform well since consumers are generally focused on getting out of the office. But CTRs on Fridays peak at around 3.23% – nearly 4% higher than most week days and more than 6% higher than on Wednesdays.
Best Time to Click
Visitors tend to interact more with ads during the day, while clicks seem to drop as the evening wears on. During the day, a peak in clicks occurs between 11 am to 2 pm when visitors interact with ads 14% more than the average. The timing shouldn’t be a surprise, as this is the peak of the workday, and many users are fully engaged with their computers. Later at night, between 11 pm to 2 am there is a significant drop in CTR, -21% below the average – which may be due to more leisurely browsing while watching TV or engaging in other activities.
While some of this is common sense, there were quite a few surprises revealed as we sorted through our data to pull this report together. Who knew the most successful ads would run at noon on Friday to consumers in Mississippi?
Marketers have to realize that there may be a few surprises within their own data as well – and you’ll never know until you analyze it. It’s best not to make assumptions about when and where audiences will or won’t click. The smart thing to do is dig in and look at the data to make informed decisions.