Blinded by Banner Ads
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Written By Reprise Media | June 26, 2006 | Share This
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Think you need a flashing display ad to get someone’s attention online? A Nielsen/Norman Group study might have you thinking twice.
ClickZ says that the group’s “eye-tracking study” suggests that web surfers tend to ignore bright, obtrusive banner ads more often than display ads with text and search ads. According to Nielsen/Norman Director of Research Kara Pernice Coyne:
“People are not looking at the typical blinding, graphical ads…They’re looking at them if they’re text…I hate to sound boring, but [it is best] if you can make sure your ad is something simple, text or a recognized logo, and it needs to be relevant to the page.”
Aside from irrelevancy, users shied away from flamboyant ads because of their perceived propensity to deliver them to websites with “malicious code or other undesirable results.” Surfers are likewise annoyed by and avoid ads that appear in the middle of the page, viewing them as “obstacles.”
Paid search listings, on the other hand, fared very well with users because of how closely they related to what searchers were looking for to begin with. The more relevant the ad text, the better, and the less…Pernice Coyne says, “users look away quickly, almost like you’re slapping them on the hand.”
The news about the relatively poor performance of certain banner ads might give some advertisers pause, but it doesn’t bother Internet Advertising Bureau President Greg Stuart. “There literally have been thousands of studies now on online advertising’s effectiveness…All the evidence is in: smoking kills, online advertising works,” he says.
Topics: SEM: Paid Search |