Eye Tracking Research on Banner Ad Blindness

Humans adapt in mysterious ways. Sometimes they adapt in more obvious ones though. When you’re browsing through webpages, you’re continuously bombarded with advertisements, flashing colors, expanding boxes, and catchy text. But in all honesty, if I surf the web for 15 minutes, I won’t recall any particulars about the ads I’ve seen, let alone notice that I’ve seen any in the first place. This can be attributed to what was once called “banner blindness,” an aversion that people have to banner ads on web pages that allow you to simply block them out of your vision.

Why do people ignore these ads – aside from the obvious that they’re annoying, distractive, and divert us from the tasks we want to accomplish? It’s a blindness that’s been developed by web users that is really fascinating when you think about it. Jakob Nielsen, a web usability expert, presented eye tracking studies showing that users rarely looked at display ads on web sites. This was not because people weren’t seeing the ads; they just subconsciously chose not to look, as they knew what the ad was doing there and why they should avoid it.

Nielson’s research utilizing eye tracking showed that there were barely any fixations on advertisements. It has also shown that users tend not to fixate on or notice design elements that resemble ads. It’s quite remarkable, really, how our brains manage to filter out content we deem unnecessary. We don’t’ have to put much thought into it – we just trust our instincts. So it’s no wonder that advertising companies are constantly trying to find ways around our natural filter in an effort to grab our attention and sell us a product.

But, alas, advertisers are finally making headway, and more and more web users end up noticing what they don’t want to. Of course, advertisers see this as a success. An interesting article on the website Clickz discusses this trend, one that began with Google having no real idea on how to monetize its search engine. Google never fell for the banner ad approach, opting instead for a keyword-based sponsored search or pay-per-click method. But things are changing even for the successful sites, and as more popular sites go the way of display advertising, it demonstrates the power of search and display together.

Development of more sophisticated advertising technology for targeting customers, in addition to a richer online experience overall, is making advertisers more successful when it comes to ad visibility.

It’s good news for the companies, and bad news perhaps for the average surfer who wants to get where they’re going without having to subject their eyeballs to a lot of ads along the way.

At Last the Blind Can See Again