As MarketingSherpa reported in our October 31, 2000 interview with Karen Breen Vogel of B-to-B Works, most B-to-B banners may be far more successful than marketers who place them think they are. In fact, according to AdKnowledge a full 32% of banner responses are "view thrus" or conversions from users who viewed your ad but did not click on it. Instead, these users remember the banner and visit the advertiser's site of their own accord an hour, week or month later when they have the time and inclination.

So, view-thru rates could easily be a critical metric when considering the success rate of any online advertising campaign. Luckily tracking them is technically easier than you might expect. According to B-to-B Works Director of Research Greg Bloom, all major online ad networks and banner serving systems now support view-thru tracking. So, when you purchase online media, be sure to ask your media buyer to include it in the deal. The cost should be about 50 cents to $1 CPM for traffic to your site from the banner, but this is often negotiable. Your rep will then email you a small piece of HTML code known as a 1x1 pixel tag to place in a hidden spot on the your site page that a typical user who's seen your banners (but not clicked on them) might enter on. Usually this is your home page.

Here's a sample of the code for this tiny, hidden pixel: IFRAME WIDTH=1 HEIGHT=1 NORESIZE SCROLLING=No FRAMEBORDER=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0MARGINWIDTH=0SRC=
"http://www.adserver.com/?advertiser1234|40|sku|176602|pixel1|16|;"

The pixel has no direct functionality at your site. However, it does allow your media sales rep's ad server to match everyone who’s visiting your web site to their entire log of
ads they've served for you.

Why aren't more people using it this simple, low-cost method to track results? Bloom says often B-to-B marketers have a hard time implementing view-thru tracking due to internal politics. "You've got to call your Webmaster or CTO and ask them to upload this change to your site. In many cases the tech people don't want to buy into it, or they'll tell you to put a request into the pipeline and it will take about six weeks to implement." Bloom also says many companies assume the process is a lot harder than it actually is, "There's a myth that you have to change these pixels for every banner. However, as long as you're using the same banner serving technology or working with the same online ad network, you won't have to update this pixel. It's easier than people think."

Want more information? Contact your media sales rep or Bloom with questions. Gregb@B2BWorks.net