Google Lets Brands Instantly Benchmark Ads

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Google announced its Display Benchmarks Tool, a way to let advertisers immediately see how their ads perform relative to aggregated campaigns. Google says that the benchmarking tool will help marketers build context around their display ads and compare their own performance to relevant data points.

Advertisers can quickly set up a report by selecting which countries, media, sizes, and formats to look at. They can choose a snapshot report, with current information, or look at trends going as far back as February 2012.

The tool shows the average interaction rate, average duration of interaction, and the expansion rate for rich media ads. It lets advertisers compare the overall click-through rate with those for standard media and rich media. And it provides information on how long expander ads stay expanded, video completion rates, and the average amount of time that rich media impressions were displayed to consumers.

The benchmarking tool was introduced in the DoubleClick Advertiser Blog on Wednesday. Google also provided some information on trends that it's seeing.

For one thing, Google finds that interaction rates correlate to larger ad sizes: the bigger the ad, the more frequently people will interact with it. It also found that rich-media-expanding formats are better for getting people to interact frequently, while in-page formats are better for encouraging longer interactions.

Google also uncovered some good news for advertisers. Since summer 2012, people are interacting with ads 50 to 60 percent more frequently. During the same period, video completions have grown approximately 24 percent to a 60 percent completion rate.