Banner Expansions – What do they tell us?

With the evolution of the creatives – from standard to rich media expansion banners, there are issues in how to track metrics that make sense. Expansion is something that can have a lot of issues can the metrics can be a bit deceptive:

• Accidental Expansions – A lot of times, consumers tend to expand ads accidentally. Thus, counting those numbers is not an accurate representation.
  
• Auto Expansive Banners – Banners are built now a days that auto-expand i.e. consumer does not need to take any action and the banner expands. The ad-servers tend to count these expansions, which is also not the correct way to measure the expansions and the interactions within the banner.
  

Thus, it is important that the measurement teams should be cognizant of these factors while reporting results of the creatives.

If the banner objective is to drive expansions, then the creative format and functionality should be kept in mind to make sure accurate metrics are reported.