How To Know Your Web Ad Is Working

May 07th, 2009 in Online Marketing- International

Source: Evan Hessel and Taylor Buley, 04.29.09, 01:00 AM EDT

A start-up says it can figure out what’s powerful or pointless. Time for struggling online publishers to worry?

LOS ANGELES — Advertisers spend nearly $8 billion annually pumping trillions of ads into boxes and banners across all other corners of the Internet.

Who actually looks at all that stuff?

Not as many people as big marketers think, says digital advertising entrepreneur Matt Hulett. He claims advertisers spend a lot of money inadvertently buying ads on the bottom of Web pages–”below the fold,” in industry parlance–where research has shown that 75% of ads go entirely unnoticed.

Other ads get better placement, Hulett says, but suffer from such confusing text or dull graphics that readers never so much as pause their cursor on them.

Mpire, Hulett’s Seattle start-up, just unveiled a new Web application designed to help marketers cut out such wasteful and pointless ad spending. The service, called AdXpose, allows advertisers to track precisely where on individual Web pages their ads land, how long they are visible and whether readers’ cursors linger over any particular ad box.

Jones Soda ( JSDA - news - people ) and Viacom’s ( VIA - news - people ) MTV Networks are among the first advertisers to use AdXpose to track their online marketing expenditures.

Mpire’s ad analytics are among the latest and most powerful in a growing market for applications tracking how marketing dollars are spent online. Since 2004, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has maintained technical standards mandating how display ads should be tracked online. PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche and ABC Interactive offer tools for auditing online ad campaigns.

Outfits like Mpire may prompt a reshuffling of online ad dollars at a time when many Web publishers are fighting to stay alive. Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) just announced a 16% drop last quarter in online ad revenue, compared to a year ago. At the New York Times Co. ( NYT - news - people ), Web ad sales dipped 6% compared to 2008.