LONDON: Consumers are 7% more likely to click on a display ad over the weekend than they are during the week, despite the fact that ad rates tend to be lower at these times, new research has found.

Adform, a Danish-based consumer trends agency, said its latest Quarterly Media Barometer showed the average cost for online advertising at the weekend was about 12% lower than they are on weekdays.

Its multi-market survey of European consumer behaviour also found that engagement rates with online ads rose by 14% over the summer, taking average engagement time to 12 seconds.

Furthermore, brands increased their real-time bidding (RTB) adspend by 92% over the summer while RTB mobile adspend recorded a 67% increase.

Despite such increases – in the face of rising costs from publishers – these programmatic buying systems only accounted for 5% of overall digital marketing spend, which Adform said was an indication that mobile is trailing behind its desktop counterparts.

Describing the online advertising industry as being in "rude health", Martin Stockfleth Larsen, chief marketing officer at Adform, added that real-time bidding for digital is continuing to grow.

He said: "While mobile is still trailing its desktop counterparts, overall RTB continues to represent the media plan of the future, allowing marketers to run more effective, cost effective and targeted campaigns."

As this trend develops, Larsen added, issues such as engagement time, video play time and viewability will begin to overtake click through rates.

The challenge for advertisers, he predicted, would remain dealing with a multitude of different suppliers, which could be expensive, inefficient and complicated.

Having one platform that can deliver all brand metrics would be more effective for the industry, Larsen concluded.

Data sourced Adform; additional content by Warc staff