How to overcome banner blindness?

Do you remember the first time you went online? Most probably, you felt overwhelmed – virtually every page displayed a lot of various banners, ad units, and other advertising items. Gradually, you got used to these and stopped noticing them. This happens because you subconsciously consider adverts not interesting and focus only on useful content. This phenomenon is known as banner blindness – the inclination of users to ignore the elements of a webpage perceived (rightfully or not) as advertising.

It is a widespread phenomenon. According to the data from Infolinks, 86% of the Internet users show signs of banner blindness. Only 14% of users remember the last ad they have seen, and only 2.8% consider advertising relevant.

Reasons for banner blindness

The main reason has already been mentioned – advertising abundance, regardless of the ad type – interactive or static ads, flash banners, and many others. Naturally, such an advertising array annoys users.

Another reason might be the ad's irrelevance. Very often users are shown content that they don’t need, and this adds up to their irritation.

And final, the most significant reason for banner blindness is negative user experience. Everyone who has ever clicked an ad at least once experienced redirecting from one page to another. At that, users don’t see the content they were initially interested in, and, consequently, the banner causes negative feelings.

Obviously, banner blindness is a problem not only for advertisers, who spent their budgets on creatives that are then ignored. It is also an issue for publishers who, due to banner blindness, lose a proportion of their revenues from inventory sales.

How to overcome banner blindness

Adsgard is interested in their partners’ getting the maximum profit from our cooperation, which is why we use efficient methods to overcome banner blindness. To be more precise, we eliminate the possibility of its occurrence.

How do we do that? As we have mentioned before, one of the reasons for banner blindness is ad irrelevance. We use all the possible features of programmatic advertising to provide very precise targeting: the ads are displayed only to the users who might be really interested in the offer. Data processing algorithms allow us to target the relevant audience which is highly likely to interact with the creative on offer.

Another important point is the app's relevance. Asgard’s algorithm work in a manner that allows us to display ads taking into account app or website thematics. The ad is organically embedded into the application or webpage and is adapted to its design and context. In other words, ads look like a part of the product, which makes them more informative and helps to generate higher CPR. In addition, such ads annoy users much less, as they see it as any other website/content, and they are not blocked automatically in contrast to annoying banners. There is always the option of skipping the ad or turning off the sound, as in the case of skippable video ads.

Conclusion

The banner blindness problem can be solved with the help of precise targeting and organic ad unit placement on the website or mobile app. With Adsgard, both options are at your fingertips. What we mean by that:

• The ads are shown only to the users who might be interested in them;
• They look organic; users are not annoyed and, in most cases, they have the choice to skip the ad.