Advertisements and web banners are everywhere. From up above the top, to the sides, bottom and in between web contents. No matter how good you're trying to avoid them, they're always there seeking your attention. Banner blindness is a trend that comes as a result of experience. If you're a webmaster/web owners that rely on ads to get revenue, you need to overcome this type of "blindness".
In the modern Digital Age, information are everywhere. If you're connected to the internet, the data you want is just a few clicks away. By the time people are coping to the various types of information that are available on the web, they can differentiate which content is which, and which information are just ads.
Banner blindness, also called advertisement blindness, is when a web visitor consciously or subconsciously ignore banners and advertisements. Coined by Benway and Lane, this type of blindness is a result of experience. When the user gets accustomed by ads and their positions, they tend to avoid them. This is a trend describing human's tendency to ignore what they first dislike on the web and mobile devices.
To make it more clearer, banner blindness describes the fact that users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad.
With more people developing banner blindness, advertising industry, brands, and publishers are all trying to compete to win the user's attention that has decreases steadily.
You may have a set attractive ads that is compelling and powerful enough to drive high conversion to your business. But since banner blindness is the result of experience, your compelling ads may not be as compelling as it is today, tomorrow.
The main method to keep banner blindness to a minimum is to "fascinate" users. Fascination comes in many ways, and no matter what you do, you need to improvise.
Breaking the Rules
Creativity is thinking outside of the box. Innovative ideas are the fuel of great inventions. Creativity in creating an advertisement that is alluring to be clicked, doesn't need to be complex. It's only necessary to make you understand your visitors.
Web visitors can come from anywhere around the globe, coming from different races, gender and age. Open your web analytics and see what content drives the most visitors, and which type of visitors do they appeal to.
After knowing you targeted audience, you need to come up with a creative solution to characterize them. This in turn will help you maximize the conversions.
Insights from analytics software, combined with heat maps, can create a lot of in-depth information regarding your targeted visitors' behavior. With that, you can direct those users to the right place on your site, and giving them the ads they actually want.
Colors, Design, Placement
There a lot of ads coming, and there are different types for each of them. But they have all some things in common: how they are displayed. Some ads are text-based, and some are graphics, while others are action-triggered. These ads have different way in interacting with users, so you need to know how to make each of them appealing.
You can use your web analytics data to find out which ads are reaching the bulk of your heavy users, and which of them aren't getting attention.
You have two types of visitors: new and returning. New visitors are those people that just found out about your site, and want to see what you have that interests them, while returning visitors are the people that come frequently to your site because they either like what you've given them, or they've subscribed to your service(s).
For new visitors, placement of your ads may not be a problem because they haven't yet get accustomed to your interface. But for returning visitors that have been exposed and got used to your website's design, placement is important.
You need to come up with a more styles and more creative placement to reach those hard-hitting fans of yours. Changing your ads placement, and recycling them again and again may work well, but users are looking for a different way to get in touch with the brands they love, and to make that happen, you need to have a strategy.
When it comes to colors, there is single solution that fits all websites. Some said that blending the ads' colors with the overall web design can make them generate more clicks, while others said that making their ads contrast and stand above all elements of design can create more revenue. Experiment with colors to see which is best for you. Take your time and observe how ads are shown, how often they're clicked, and how relevant they are to your contents.
Banner comes with many sizes to cope (blend) with the size of its dedicated spot. You need to play with the sizes, and see how they can blend with your website's design without interfering with user experience. Try to make your ads a part of your content so they fulfill one another.
The very worst types of advertising banners are coming from the following list. Try to avoid using and displaying them.
- Pop-up ads that cover the website's content.
- OS/Browser UI mimic to trick users into clicking on it.
- Tricking users to click ads for more information.
- Floating ads, and those that moves around the screen.
- Blinking ads.
- Auto playing multimedia ads, like music or video.
If you can be more innovative, you can try alternate methods to come up with a list of ideas to attract certain insights to target your audience so they can relate your ads to your contents. User experience is key to not only obtaining the attention but also maintaining this attention through the long run.
Keep Them Relevant
Advertisements on the web are meant to be seen and clicked. Ads are useless if people don't want to see them, blocking them, let alone clicking on them. If you're a publisher of an ad network, like for example Google's AdSense, you don't have total control of what ads to show on your site. Large ad networks usually implement contextual ads (ads selected and served by automated systems based on the identity of the user and the content displayed) so you have less control of them. But if you're running your own ads, you better make those ads as relevant as possible to your contents.
If you have a lot of contents, open your web analytics and see what keywords drive people to your site the most. And then see which pages of your sites that are directed by those keyword searches. After knowing what keywords that drive your traffic, try to make your ads using those keywords.
Relevancy is a must. And when ads are concerned, no one wants to click on ads that they don't like.
Conclusion
Banner blindness comes by experience, and most if not all webmasters and web owners as well as brands and the advertising industry, are trying to avoid. Banner blindness doesn't have to be the end of online advertising, but as publishers and advertisers, you need to come up with new compelling strategies to change people's habit.
Advertisements are the grease that lubricates the gears of the web. No matter how bad they are, or how much they're avoided and hated, they'll always be there. Advertisements are what drives many part of the web we see today, so whether you like it or not, it's not leaving anytime soon.
Related: Minimizing Ad Blindness By Making Ads Relevant and Valuable