You would expect, given this information, that Internet Explorer would be uncontested at the top of the ad-click mountain. After examining a sample of traffic across the Chitika network, we found that, if you expected that, you’d be right – IE is, indeed, the browser with the highest clickthrough rates. Surprisingly, Opera is in second place, well ahead of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

What does it mean? I’ve long contended that the more non-standard choices someone uses to browse the Internet – like someone who goes out of their way to install Chrome instead of using the preinstalled IE – the less likely they are to click on ads. For the most part, examples we examine hold this to be an accurate statement.

So again, we go to our analytics solution to see what kind of traffic our site is getting. Chitika Insights is an interesting example, as our readers use both Chrome and Firefox much more often than they do Internet Explorer. Indeed, even Safari is neck-and-neck with IE when it comes to you all out there in Insights Readerville.

If the Portrait of a Clicker technographic targeting theory holds true, Insights should see much lower ad click rates than a site that gets more Internet Explorer traffic.

Publishers, do you see this phenomenon in your traffic? Do your users on IE (and Windows) click on ads more often than your 3rd-party-browser-using users? Let us know in the comments.

For this first edition, we’re looking at operating systems.  Look through your analytics and you’ll find a breakdown of the operating systems used by visitors to your site.  For example, insights.chitika.com traffic is 71% Windows 19% Mac, 2.5% iPhone, 2.5% iPad, and 2% Linux.

What does that mean, though?  Which operating systems provide the most valuable traffic to you as a publisher?  We took a look at a sample of over 141 million impressions to find out.

Best Operating System for Ad Clicks:

Windows takes the cake with a CTR of 0.77% in this sample.  The big driver of this appears to be people still using Windows XP – although it has a smaller CTR than ’95, ’98 or 2000, those operating systems drive so little traffic that it’s not really worth much to web publishers.  XP is still the top-used operating system across the Chitika network, and with its relatively high clickthrough rate, it’s a publisher’s best friend.

Worst Operating System for Ad Clicks:

Surprisingly, it’s Mac OS X.  I expected Linux to take the “least likely to click on ads” trophy, but Mac users click just a tiny bit less often than Linux users.  In fact, the latest build of OS X – Snow Leopard – is the single worst OS version for ad clicks, with less than half the CTR of Windows XP.

What Should I Do?

Keep in mind that your results may vary, but consider different landing pages/website layouts for different operating systems.  If a Mac user is unlikely to click on an ad, show less volume and more targeted ads (like Chitika’s search-targeted ads… had to get the shameless plug in, but they really do work well).  Eventually a Mac user may click on an advertisement, but by only showing a select few targeted ads, you can improve your user experience by de-cluttering your site and serving only ads for what they’re looking for right at the moment.

Next week, we’ll do the same analysis for web browsers.  Taking all bets – which browser gets the most clicks?  Tell us what you think on our Facebook page, and we’ll tell you in the next installment of Portrait of a Clicker.

As a web publisher, two things really matter when it comes to making money: driving lots of traffic, and making sure that traffic converts into ad clicks.  Looking at a sample of nearly 70 million impressions across the Chitika ad network, we’ve found that Google is worlds better than Facebook at doing both.

In the sample, Google users clicked on ads 0.7% of the time, while Facebook users clicked at a 0.08% rate.  Add that to the fact that Google sent about 89x the raw traffic, and it becomes obvious that a web publisher’s #1 most important goal should be to maximize their traffic from search.

This isn’t to say that a Facebook presence is worthless, but the numbers imply two things: one, that most activity on Facebook stays on Facebook; and two, Facebook traffic simply doesn’t come with the same intent carried by Google traffic.  When a user comes from search, they have a singular goal in mind: to find what they’re looking for, and be done with it.  Social media traffic – especially Facebook – is more a reflection of the intent of a user’s friends, which doesn’t translate well to the traffic’s desire to convert.

For more information on this study, contact:

Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
insights@chitika.com

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.

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

Interestingly, iPad users are much more likely to click ads than their iPhone-using contemporaries.  This may be chalked up to the difference in display size.  Android devices, however, by and large have similar screens to the iPhone, and Chitika’s advertisements display the same on both devices.

As Android continues to grow in market share, it will be interesting to see how this figure changes.  For now, however, it is obvious that Android users should be high up on the list of targets for mobile advertisers.

Contact

Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com

To determine the optimal word count, Chitika looked at a sample of 41,103,403 impressions of search traffic coming into their network between June 13^th and 19^th.
  Within the sample, 10,710,579 impressions – some 26% of all search traffic – came from three-word searches.  The next top word counts were two-word (19%), four-word (17%), and finally one-word (14%).  Any query beyond five words will see dramatically lower traffic, throwing into perspective just how fragmented traffic from long queries really is.

Additionally, Chitika looked at the advertising click rate by word count to see how visitors’ intent was reflected by how many words they searched for.  The highest ad click rates were for queries of 5, 6 and 4 words.  The implication is that a more complex search is more likely to convert into revenue for a publisher, up to a point.

What does this mean for SEO professionals and web publishers?  It means that there is a very definitive sweet spot in search optimization – ranking high for popular queries between three and five words long should see both optimal traffic and conversions.

As it turns out, Bing users are over 50% more likely to click an ad on your site than Google users. What does this mean? Well, for publishers, it means you should start concentrating on driving more Bing traffic to your site. For Microsoft, it seems to suggest that Bing’s success will last about as long as its advertising budget will carry it.

The Raw Numbers