As blog advertising is a relatively new medium there are limited sources giving out information on the return on investment. As well, one must keep in mind that simply measuring click-throughs is not an accurate representation of the whole package that blog advertising offers a client. Leaving a positive impression on a customer and a helpful recommendation is impossible to measure on the Internet.
To clarify, a clickthrough is the number of times a link is clicked, and the visitor is re-directed to a new web page, it tracks the ISP number in order to count each unique visitor to the site. A referral counts the number of unique visitors who arrive at this new page, starting out on one specific page. Referrals track visitors coming to the advertised site from the blog or website that featured the product, reviewed it or simply had an advertisement on their page. Using tracking sites such as statcounter a blogger can know where a person entered their site, what site they came from, what they clicked on when they arrived, how long they visited for and even the specific ISP of the reader. These site are valuable for bloggers as well as advertisers because they can track specific moves readers make and give a form of feedback for what is attracting the most attention.
The following example looks at a technology review blog, two news sites, a forum, and a portal that all carried the same banner advertising on their site. These sites were the top five highest contributors to referrals for the advertiser. Of the total traffic resulting from the advertising News site A sent in 39.05%, News site B sent in 23.88%, Technology review blog 19.33%, the forum site sent only 11.56% and the portal 6.19%. In order to gain a better understanding of these numbers it is important to keep in mind that not all sites have the same amount of traffic. For example, News site A had 192 times more monthly page views then the technology blog, so even though the technology blog had half of the amount of referrals this is still a good rate for the blog as they have significantly less readers.
Once the readers are re-directed to the new site it is important to look at the number of pages they view and how much time they spend on the site. This tells the advertiser the quality of the people that are being referred from the advertisement. The more pages they view and the longer they stay on the site means the advertising led to a better match from the advertising to the consumer, or more matches of targeted customers.
Page Views per Visit
News site A - 2.17 page views
News site B - 2.06 page views
Forum - 1.78 page views
Portal - 2.64 page views
Technology Blog - 6.12 page views
Average Time on Site
News Site A - 2.24 minutes
News Site B - 2:38 minutes
Forum - 1:35 minutes
Portal - 3:07 minutes
Technology Blog - 10:17 minutes
The technology blog drives more quality traffic because the readers actually use the referred site more. The figures above shows us 3 to 5 times more site usage by visitors coming from the technology blog.
Bounce rates indicate the percentage of people leaving the referred site right away. The lower the bounce rates means the visitors are sticking to the site. When a visitor leaves the site right away, it could mean they accidentally clicked on the ad or were mislead to what they would gain from following the link. This can also be described as targeted traffic.
Bounce Rates
News Site A - 60%
News Site B - 60%
Forum - 75%
Portal - 56%
Technology Blog - 34%
How much money was actually spent by the advertiser on all five of the outlets for their advertising is unknown. From the limited data available, the blog received 2% of the total ad spending. Only including raw number to track the return on investment for this advertising they gained 19% of high quality traffic for only 2% of their budget. This is a fantastic return, especially for the quality of the readers who were referred to the new web site. This method of advertising lets the advertiser easily track where their dollars are best spent and what methods are working better then others. They can adjust and easily rearrange where they are spending their money to cater to the best return on investment. This is rarely found in other forms of advertising.
(Study available here, from Yuga Tech)
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