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Uncategorized Thursday, June 30th 2011 at 4:50 pm

You’re More Likely To [X] Than Click On A Banner Ad, Maybe

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So, there are some interesting statistics floating around that are highlighting the fact that nobody clicks on banner ads anymore. Solve Media, a company that puts banner ads in those lovely CAPTCHA tests, has been collecting the data and compairing it against some relatively infrequent (and extremely rare) phenomena. Apparently, you are 2.13 times as likely to get a full house in poker, and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad. Amusing, no?

Of course, now that more and more Internet users are becoming acquainted with the Internet enough to know that banner ads are bad news, you can only expect that banner click-throughs are dropping off like crazy. And while these statistics seem to be showing that in an interesting manner, there’s something about them that doesn’t quite feel right. It has been a while since I took statistics and even longer since I paid a lick of attention to statistics, but some of these odd ratios strike me as vague and lacking in context, so I wouldn’t bet on them (ha!). Whatever the case, I’m completely in favor of not clicking on banner ads anymore. Unless they’re the ones that let you punch a monkey or something. Those can stick around.

(via Business Insider)

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  • Eastern-dave

    Amusing….but the math is completely wrong.

    As the scenarios became Less likely, the implied odds of them was rising….

    There’s a very good chance someone might Watch american idol…
    But a very small chance you’d climb Mount Everest…but the Mount Everest event is presented as more likely.

  • Steve

    This is probably based on a ratio like pages viewed vs banner ads clicked- then that ratio becomes an odd set against stuff like number of everst climbs or number of American idol viewers taken as a percentage from the total number of people in the world- or possibly even more specific than that- they’re numbers that demonstate the unbelievably low odds of clicking a banner ad vs other possibly biased scenarios

  • Cromin

    Your maths is wrong. The statement is “you are more likely to climb AND reach the summit than you are to view a webpage AND click on the banner ad”

  • TheOtherJK

    I suppose a coastie could join the SEALs, it’s just not likely. Less likely than clicking on a banner ad, I have no idea.

  • Slab

    Huh. I clicked on at least two banner ads this week. So, where’s my mega millions?

  • Anonymous
  • Intheaethyr

    I took as exactly that too.

    like, if you actually attempted to climb mount everest (that being 100% in the case of their scenario) THEN you are 279.64 times more likely to reach the top than click on a banner ad.

    which in reality, most people that actually get the gear together and seriously attempt to climb the thing probably do get to the top, making it quite likely that if you try that it will happen.

    same thing for the plane crash etc, it will be if you’re actually in a plane crash then you’re  this likely to survive.. not like.. random guy A is this likely to board a plane during his life that will crash and result in him surviving.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1024847817 C Pace Lattin

    This story is completely wrong. Having owned and run banner networks, many of our banner advertisements were getting as much as 1-2% click rates on a frequent basis. The reason their banner clicks are so small is that their banners are small, their method (on captcha ads) are during another process.

  • http://www.kimbach.org Kim Amator Bach

    wrong – in my case – I click on ALL sponsored links on facebook so #Zuck can harvest mo green from advertisers o/