Overall, people spend more time on Instant Messaging (IM) and on content sections of web pages, such as news, finance and sports, as compared to email and social networks. Furthermore, the longer people spend on a web page, the higher the likelihood that they will interact or engage with your ad.

The more time users spend with an ad displayed on the web page that they are viewing, the higher the likelihood that they will touch it, interact with it and engage with it. An analysis by Eyeblaster Research indicates that news, finance, sports and homepages have the highest Average Ad Duration. They are also among the highest in Dwell Rate.

Apart from instant messaging, communications and social networks tend to be low on Average Ad Duration and Dwell Rate. As a typically desktop application based environment rather than a browser based environment, instant messaging is an odd bird; it is an outlier in Average Ad Duration, and relatively midway in terms of Dwell Rate. Mail and especially social networks have lower than average ad duration and a low Dwell Rate.

Average Ad Duration measures the average amount of time that the ad was displayed on the browser or the application, in seconds. In browser based environments, the ad duration can also be used as a proxy for the time spent with the site displayed. It does not, however, indicate that the user was looking at the site the whole time.

Dwell Rate measures the proportion of impressions that were actively touched or engaged with out of served impressions. Unintentional touches and interactions are excluded. Higher Dwell Rate means that users have not only seen the ad, but also have showed interest by touching it, expanding the panel, playing the video or interacting.

Eyeblaster Research’s study results on time spent by environment/section concur with a study published last month by the Online Publishers Association (OPA). The OPA tracked how users spend their aggregate time on websites. While at Eyeblaster we measured the Average Ad Duration as a proxy for the duration that a web page was viewed, the OPA has aggregated the time that an average user spends with Web pages and IM applications across environments.

The OPA’s Internet Activity Index indicates that consumers spend more time with content rather than community sites and communications. The study indicates that the proportion of time spent on content sites increased from 34% of total time spent in 2003 to 42% in 2009—a 24% increase.

Based on the analysis, the OPA found that the percentage of time spent online with Web sites providing news, information and entertainment, like NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and Edmunds.com (Content sites), has grown even in the rise of community sites such as Facebook. Moreover, communication sites offering email and IM have decreased in their share of online time spent due to the ability to conduct these activities elsewhere.


Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst