The real reason Google's clicks are flat

skrenta.com

13 points·fleaflicker··6 comments

As an advertiser or investor I'd be much much more concerned that 6% of the online population generates 50% of the clicks: http://www.smvgroup.com/news_popup_flash.asp?pr=1643

6% of the online population generates 50% of the clicks

... and the 6% are non-representative of internet users as a whole. This finding deserves to be better known. Why don't you post it in its own right?

Edit: I can't find anything about this besides the press release and blogs that quote the press release. Why haven't they released the actual study? Also, the study was limited to "display ads" - does this mean banner ads as opposed to Adwords/Adsense?

This finding and the study that it comes from has come up 3 times in last couple months. I'm surprised it isn't mentioned even more than that!

It seemed to be all but ignored when the Google clicks data was released last week.

One blog (I forget which) made a very good point that the market will self-correct for the lower amount of clicks.

Since the clicking area is now smaller and more targeted, one could make a relatively safe assumption that less click throughs are accidental and/or from deceptive web design. All things equal, this should drive up the price per click enough to offset the lower total amount of clicks.

But that only deals with the "click through" problem not the "who clicks through" problem.

Um, that was the source article!

Any evidence for this?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com