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Only 2 Percent of Internet Users Pay For ‘Free’ Websites
By Anna Johnson on November 26th, 2009Research by online ad network Chitika indicates that only two in 100 people who browse the Internet actually click on the advertisements they see.
Chitika’s study, based on the actions of 86 million Internet users over a two-week period in October 2009, essentially means that only 2 percent of Internet users effectively pay for the free (advertising-supported) content they consume online.
During the two weeks of the study, Chitika monitored ad clicks of a sample of 86,683,507 anonymous individuals throughout the company’s 60,000+ publisher network to determine the percentage that could be classified as “clickers.”
Chitika found that 1,863,710 of the anonymous individuals – 2.15 percent – actually clicked on an ad at least once:
- Unique Users: 86,683,507
- Clickers: 1,863,710
- Non-Clickers: 84,819,797
One of Chitika’s conclusions from its research is that advertising supported websites need to move away from old approaches to advertising. Said Chitika in a press release:
“Replacing old-media theories of advertising to demographics with predictive targeting towards the people most likely to act on an ad appears more and more viable with improving technology, and can go a long way towards helping online advertising dominate its traditional media counterparts.”
