Industry measurement metrics mapped for National Anti-Click-Through Rate Day

For IAB UK's fourth National Anti-Click-Through Rate Day - our annual campaign to discourage over-reliance on click-through rates - we’ve mapped the different verification metrics offered by online media owners in one place for the first time.

This has been developed following a study we conducted with LongTerm Digital late last year, showing that one of the biggest challenges for advertisers and agencies when it comes to implementing verified measurement strategies is the different capabilities offered by media owners/platforms and a lack of consistency across touch points. Bringing this together in one place is a first step in helping understand what’s on offer across the industry. 

The initiative forms part of our fourth annual National Anti-Click-Through-Rate Day, which this year sees us hijack Valentine’s Day with a short film to ‘take the deceit out of data-ing with the IAB Data-ing app’. 

The film brings to life different digital metrics to allow advertisers to discover the truth behind them - including those that are not always what they seem. The message to advertisers is: Don’t fall for the clickheads, find your perfect metric match instead. 

National Anti-Click-Through Rate Day, which began in 2019 with the now infamous ‘Don’t be a Clickhead’ campaign, calls out the ineffectiveness of click-through rates and aims to educate the industry about alternative measurement metrics. 

The campaign is the 2022 instalment of IAB UK’s ongoing attempt to discourage the use of click-through rates as a form of digital ad measurement. As part of this, it has mapped the different verification metrics offered by online media owners in one place for the first time.

Commenting on this ongoing drive, our CEO Jon Mew says: “Four years on from our first National Anti-Click-Through Rate Day, our campaign against clicks is still needed. Our research shows that click-through rates continue to be advertisers and agencies’  most valued metric when it comes to direct response campaigns, giving a one-sided and fragmented snapshot of how a campaign is performing. 

“The serious message behind our activation this year is that while CTRs will tell you something about your ad’s performance, it won’t tell you the full story. By getting comfortable with alternative digital metrics, advertisers can gain more reliable and holistic insight into performance. As an industry, we can then begin to realise digital’s potential as a brand building tool - particularly as channels that aren’t built for clicks go mainstream, such as digital audio and gaming.” 

Take a look at our Measurement Toolkit to explore the different measurement options available.