Here's the site to watch - Watch This Space website. The first set of metrics you’ll see available are the latest display benchmarks, which cover a breadth of data: from CTR metrics to engagement metrics for rich media ads such as interaction and expansion rate, video complete rates and average interaction times -- all across a broad range of ad sizes, creative types and industry verticals.

Some interesting insight from the latest Google Display Benchmarks:

• Use of rich media ad formats have grown by double
  The industry has seen a 2x increase in the proportion of impressions going to Rich Media ads. No surprise as we're all looking to make a larger impact.  
• 2010, simple flash ads accounted for 54% of all global formats served via the DoubleClick for Advertisers platform, down from 74% in 2009. 
• Image ads, in comparison, experienced an uptick with 28% of formats served in 2010 up from 17% in 2009. 
• Rich media ad formats growing to 18% of all the impressions served in 2010 up from 9% globally in 2009.

• Response and engagement rates have been holding steady since 2009.
  In the past two years, the overall click-through rate has remained steady at around 0.09%.

• Interaction rates trended slightly lower when comparing Q4 2010 to Q4 2009, but in general this measure of engagement has remained relatively steady over the course of 2010 after coming down from its peak in early 2009. (Note: Due to a change in the DFA methodology for interaction rates back in April 2008, we only reflect benchmarking data for interaction rates from then onward.)

• Expansion rates have fallen considerably since early 2009 but now we are seeing rates leveling off with a slight uptick towards the end of 2010.

• Video completion rates on rich media ads have generally remained consistent except for a several month peak towards the later half of 2008.

• No Surprise - The Bigger the ad the Bigger the response. Bigger ads perform better. Half-page ad unit (300x600) which had the highest CTR, interaction rate (for both in-page and expandable formats) and expansion rates of all the available creative sizes we tracked for the benchmarks.

• Although the U.S. had one of the lowest expansion rates, this market showed the highest expansion time. So Americans seem to expand ads less but when they do spend more time engaging with the ads themselves.

• In terms of industry verticals, auto advertisers performed the best in terms of CTR (0.13% for flash ads) but conversely had the lowest interaction (1.9%) and expansion rates (0.2%). For interaction rate, telecom (9.4%) and B2B (9.2%) advertisers were the highest while B2B stood out in terms of expansion rate (7.5%) benchmarks.

A few last comments about these benchmarks. The data for these benchmarks are derived from a robust data set across DoubleClick for Advertisers, based on rigorous methodology with input from the Advertising Research Foundation. The charts cover global benchmark figures for the entirety of 2010 by ad format, ad size and industry vertical. The benchmarks are normalized across hundreds of advertisers, thousands of campaigns, and tens of billions of ad impressions.

For additional insights and access to the full set of available benchmarks, visit the benchmarks section on the Watch This Space website. More in-depth benchmarks by industry are available exclusively to DoubleClick clients. 

A big thank you to Pamela Eng, Product Marketing Manager, Google Adworks Blog - http://adwords.blogspot.com/

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Chris Patheiger is a Vice President of Business Development at Redux Media, a leading international online publisher network of top-quality, specialty websites and media representation firms. Chris is responsible for Communications, Sales and E-Publisher of TheMediaPath.com online advertising Blog. He can be reached at chris@reduxmedia.com