Polar has released its latest branded content benchmark report [download page], this one covering Q2 2016 but also containing references to earlier quarters. The study shows that average click-through rates are up year-over-year through the first half of 2016, with mobile devices leading the way.
Indeed, tablets demonstrated the highest average branded content CTR in Q2 (0.4%), followed by mobile phones (0.37%) and desktops (0.22%). The order was reversed for average time spent (or dwell time) with the content, which was led by desktops (187 seconds), ahead of mobile phones (135 seconds) and tablets (124 seconds). Overall, desktops accounted for the majority (59%) of branded content views, with mobile phones comprising 28% and tablets the remaining 13%. Branded content views refer to pageviews to a branded content article or video.
As for branded content views, the study contains some interesting data on the half-life of a campaign. This is always intriguing data, which we’ve covered in the past for mobile apps, Facebook posts, email opens, Tumblr posts, and YouTube videos.
The Polar benchmarks show the distribution of views during the first 8 weeks of a campaign. Presumably, given the extent to which views drop off after the first month, these figures are an approximation of total views, rather than just during the first 8-week period. As such, they’ll be treated here as representing distribution across a full campaign period.
In any case, the results show that, on average, 48% of a campaign’s views occur during the first week of it going live. Views are highly concentrated within the first month, as 90% of total views occur within the first 4 weeks of the campaign’s launch. So, marketers, plan accordingly!
About the Data: The Polar benchmark report metrics are computed based on a cleaned dataset that has removed test campaigns and those with known tracking errors. All campaigns with less than 1,000 lifetime views were also removed. Throughout the first half of the year, the dataset was comprised of 39.7 million branded content views.
