Advertising online

Discussion articles

• Ad conversion rate influenced by time (not click rate)
  "According to new research from Advertising.com. The results seem to show online ads can have an impact on buyers' purchasing decisions long after they view an ad."
  (Frank Spillers, Demystifying Usability)

• Ads are here to stay: planning for ad placement
  "Site advertisements can interfere with content and disrupt layout. Yet they are most often part of website requirements, forcing IAs to come up with strategies for incorportating them. Is there a graceful way to handle ads online?"
  (Alex Kirtland, Boxes and Arrows)

• Ad blobs: something different
  "One reason Internet advertising has such low clickthrough rates is that most people naturally skip over anything that looks like an ad."
  (James Thornton, James Thornton.com)

• Advertising: a cry for usability
  "Advertising is frequently interruption-based, posing a serious usability flaw. It's very obvious on the Web as pop-up ads, audio, animation, Flash ads, and exit pops make the Internet increasingly difficult to navigate and use, and its content increasingly difficult to read."
  (Kim Brooks, ClickZ)

• Banner blindness, human cognition and web design
  "Evidently nobody ever studied real users before--they simply assumed that big, colorful items were visible. This paper, shows once again the importance of observations over logic when it comes to predicting human behavior. People behave the way they behave, not the way our logical analyses and wishes would have them behave. People follow their interests, their needs, their customs. They are driven by curiosity, boredom, emotion. And the 'they' refers to 'we': us."
  (Donald Norman, Nielsen Norman Group)

• Banner blindness: old and new findings
  "Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Classified advertising: a web success
  "Classified advertising is a natural for Web delivery since it is basically a database application. Thus, even though I mainly think that advertising doesn't work on the Web, I am very optimistic for the prospects of Web-based classifieds."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Internet advertising and the law
  "The Internet is a new marketing frontier where the rules and regulations are rapidly evolving. In this environment, Internet advertisers need to be aware of the laws of their home country, as well as those which relate to other large market countries and international trade."
  (Roger Hudson, Web Usability)

• Is Google advertising evil?
  "Most advertising is low value. It is generally not wanted. But, when done well, as with Google advertising, uses get exactly what they want in the way of answers, solutions, and ideas. The technology behind Google that matches the current content with available relevant advertising is the usability special sauce. Users and publishers unknowingly rely on this highly usable technology and Google delivers. Brilliant technology, brilliant user experience."
  (John S Rhodes, Apogee)

• Making web advertisements work
  "Web users are highly goal-driven, and ads that interfere with their goals will be ignored. To succeed, ads must work with the medium, as well as with the user's aims and mindset."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Relevant banner ads reduce user ire
  "Most people would find banner ads less annoying if they were more relevant to their interests or needs, according to a study released today by the Ponemon Institute."
  (Kevin Newcomb, ClickZ News)

• The most hated advertising techniques
  "Advertising is an integral part of the Web user experience: people repeatedly encounter ads as they surf the Web, whether they're visiting the biggest portals, established newspapers, or tiny personal sites. Most online advertising studies have focused on how successful ads are at driving traffic to the advertiser, using simple metrics such as clickthrough rates. Unfortunately, most studies sorely neglect the user experience of online ads. As a result, sites that accept ads know little about how the ads affect their users and the degree to which problematic advertising tricks can undermine a site's credibility. Likewise, advertisers don't know if their reputations are degraded among the vast majority of users who don't click their ads, but might well be annoyed by them."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Web design: never let an ad agency near your website
  "The average advertising agency fundamentally doesn't get the web. They bring their print and TV thinking to the web with embarrassing results."
  (Gerry McGovern, New Thinking)

• Why advertising doesn't work on the web
  "Because of the drastic differences in popularity between sites, only the top 0.01% of websites can generate sufficient revenues from advertising: in the larger picture, advertising is almost irrelevant for the success of the Web."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Will plain text ads continue to rule?
  "Text-only advertisements work far better than banners, but is this only due to their novelty? Search engine text ads will retain their superiority over time, but text ads on other sites will work only if they focus on directly meeting users' needs."
  (Jakob Nielsen, Alertbox)

• Words come before looks in web design
  "Advertising agencies tend to design awful websites because they are obsessed with getting attention. When people come to your website, you have already got their attention. They want to do something. They want detail. They want facts. The thing they value most is their time. So don't waste it."
  (Gerry McGovern, New Thinking)

Research articles

• Does the intrusiveness of an online advertisement influence user recall and recognition?
  "This study investigated the effect of the type (banner ad, pop-up ad and floating ad) and state (animated and non-animated) of online advertisements on recall and recognition of the advertisements. It was hypothesized that floating ads, pop-up ads, and animated ads would be easier to recall due to their intrusive nature. Results showed that participants in the pop-up ad and floating ad condition had better recall of the presence of the ad as well as better recognition. Animation did not significantly influence any of these measures."
  (Sav Shrestha, Usability News)

• Why are users banner blind? The impact of navigation style on the perception of web banners
  "It has been observed that contradictory results have been found regarding the perception of banner advertisements on the Internet. While some studies found that recall and recognition scores for banners were at a satisfactory level, others observed that banners are almost generally overlooked. In this study, it is argued that the opposing results might be explained by differences in navigation style (aimless browsing versus goal directed searching). To test this hypothesis, 32 subjects were presented with a website containing a number of banners ads. Half the subjects were asked to search for specific information, while the other half was instructed just to explore the site as they wished. In a subsequent recall and recognition test, subjects from the aimless browsing group performed significantly better than subjects from the information search group. Results are discussed with regard to the supposed underlying processes of perception and information processing."
  (Magnus Pagendarm & Heike Schaumburg, Journal of Digital Information)