Anyone interested in the web advertising industry should check out this ComScore white paper.

The paper argues that the Click Through Rates (CTR) fail to quantify the value of Online Ads. The reason is simple: users will often seek via search or through offline methods the brand and then purchase the product. Clicking right there is only a small part of the value — if you actually go out and measure the impact of a campaign you can get some true value metrics.

Online advertising is starting to look a lot like TV or print advertising —  a way to get your message out to audiences that will respond depending on the quality and quantity of the advertising, not so much the medium.

Hopefully, reports and data like this will help people understand that it is not all about click through rates.

The data say: “The results presented in this paper will show the manner in which online display ads work in affecting consumer behavior, revealing that there are indeed latency effects and branding effects even when click rates are minimal.”