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The latest display benchmarks released by Google cover a variety of properties ranging from click through rate to engagement metrics such as interaction and expansion rate and average interaction time across a range of ad sizes, creative types and industry verticals.

One of the interesting details provided by these metrics is that the use of rich media ad formats has doubled. Simple flash ads accounted for 54% of all global formats through the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform. This same metric accounted for 74% in 2009.

On the other hand, image ads account for 28% of the ad formats used in 2010, up from 17% in 2009. However, the response and engagement rates have remained more or less steady at 0.09% in the last two years.

Interaction rates have also remained more or less steady between the last quarter of 2009 and 2010. Expansion rates, which had fallen in 2009 now show an upward trend. Video completion rates on rich media ads have also remained generally remained consistent.

Display ad response and engagement rate benchmarks by month

Quite surprisingly, it has been found that larger ads do generate a better response from users. The half-page ad unit has been found to generate the best response in terms of CTR, interaction rates as well as expansion rates.

The U.S. market shows the lowest expansion rate, but the highest expansion time.

Auto advertisers were found to have the highest click through ratio, but they had the lowest interaction and expansion rates. On the other hand, telecom and B2B advertisers had the highest interaction rate and B2B advertisers had the highest expansion rates.