Before we tell you about the ways by which you can make ads that manage to beat Banner blindness, we want to ensure that you all know what exactly it is. Banner blindness deals with web usability where the visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously do not pay any attention to the banner-like information displayed over the website.
Coined by Benway and Lane , this term states how often the visitors, while reading website content, ignore the surroundings that display ads. It is something that even you must have done many times when you visit some websites. For any advertiser, beating banner blindness is a challenge. Through this post, we will be helping you create ads that could overcome banner blindness. Together, Banner blindness.org and Infolinks have summed up some exciting and useful stats from the research conducted back in 2012 . Some of the interesting facts include that an average American witnesses nearly 1,903 ads every month, but interestingly only 2.8% of them are considered to be relevant.
How To Beat Banner Blindness
Standard Ad Placement
As per the banner blindness problem, the organic content seems to draw all the visibility. However, with the right placement of ads, you can make your ads as visible as marginal content, as the traditionally placed advertisements. As per the Infolinks usability study, that there were as much as 156% more views when the ads were placed in the top area rather than the bottom area of the page. Further, eye tracking maps have shown that the visitors tend to see more of the content that is placed at the top. So, for better visibility, you should put the ad at the top.
Example : In the Food and Travel Magazine, the landscape skyscraper ads seem most visible because they are being placed “above the fold.”
The F-Pattern
An exciting study by Jakob Nielson shows that the leading pattern in which users read the content is identical to the letter ”F.” It means that readers first horizontally read the upper part of the content section and then proceed with the content placed down the page and then, at last, the user scans the left side of the page. This observation was made after observing several user’s reading patterns.
According to Jakob , it is best when you place the ads as per the F pattern logic. Even when you follow the F pattern, you will have to make sure that you keep the ads ”above the fold.” It will add to the value of the advertisement by increasing visibility.
Homepage Skin
Big shot sites such as IMDb.com often use ads that come with their homepage skin. Since IMDb is like a reliable brand for them and so the site takes its visitors clearly to the ad while suggesting that the same is associated with the website. Thus, the advertisers manage to keep the visitors happy and entertained while creating an outgoing brand experience rather than making use of smaller, distracting ads.
Welcome Pages
The welcome page is something that the visitors come across when first navigating a website. What you can do is to display a highlighted ad before taking them to the welcome page. When you browse the homepage of Forbes.com, the first thing that they do is to show you such ads together with a quote. It is what lets the website stand ahead of other standard ads that are placed alongside the website content. Since the ad is next to impossible to miss, you can expect the announcement to draw high visibility.