Just in case you didn’t already know, we manage the Google AdWords campaigns for a lot of clients. These campaigns get a much higher click-through rate than banner advertising. Banners are much-vaunted for their branding abilities, and while research on that is mixed, that’s not the issue here. We’re looking at click-through rates from Google campaigns. And I just want to tell you a few of the figures that we’re seeing from our work with clients.Click-through rate [definition] is basically the percentage of people who saw your ad that actually clicked on it to visit your site. Banner advertising click-through rates have settled at 0.2% or thereabouts - this equates to roughly two people clicking on your ad for every thousand that see the ad.

To calculate a click-through rate, you divide the number of clicks by the number of ‘views’ (also called ‘impressions’) of the ad. Views/Impressions is the number of times an ad is viewed by internet users.

So, if your ad is seen 100 times and 2 people click on it, that’s a click-through rate of 2%. If 8 people clicked out of 100, it’s 8%. If 1,000 people viewed the ad and 22 people clicked on it, that’s a click-through rate of 2.2%.

Now, onto blowing our trumpet. Only joking. These are actual figures from client campaigns. Let’s go:

- 18.3% for a popular mis-spelling of a client’s brand name. 173,000 views, 32,000 clicks.

- Exactly 17% for a targeted keyword. 600,000 views of the ad, over 100,000 clicks. Irish users only.
- 15.4% for the keyphrase “mortgages ireland”.
- 14.8% for an extremely popular autos search term. Irish only.
- 12.4% for a business-to-business technology operation offering a free white paper for download as a sales leads gatherer.
- 9.9% over three years for an extremely popular hotel term, targeted to US and UK users.

Checking actual conversion rates [define] on each of these terms shows an average of 4.1%, from a low of 2.9% to a high of 11.2%.

This is hard proof that online is working for a wide variety of industries. In terms of actual business, each of these clients is adding to their bottom line by investing in online marketing.

Registration for the Domain .eu began on 7 December 2005 with a 4-month “sunrise” period during which existing trademark holders and public companies were allowed to register their trademark.

The domain names are being given out on a first-come-first-serve basis. Applicants then have 40 days to provide proof they hold a trademark in that name (to avoid the risk of cybersquatters taking names which are not legally theirs).

Seems like a simple enough process, especially for the Goliaths of industry, right? Well… PricewaterhouseCoopers - official validation agent for all .eu applications - made a clerical error in its own application for pwc.eu and pricewaterhousecoopers.eu and had to re-apply!

Other trademark holders weren’t so quick off the draw. There was a race between Ralph Lauren, Nestle and Volkswagen for the domain polo.eu. Apparently all three applied within 5 minutes of each other and Ralph Lauren, owner of Polo.com, missed out by only three minutes and 24 seconds to Volkswagen… German efficiency eh!

If you want to apply to get yourself a pan-European identity on the net, registration will be open to the public from 7 April.