Banner blindness

About 44% of your advertising budget gets lost. The main reason behind it is the ever-growing visual intelligence of digital consumers, who subconsciously develop purposeful blindness, which means they overlook everything on the overly saturated digital display that does not serve the purpose of their online search. A research titled People’s perceptions of personalized ads (O’Donnell, Cramer, 2015) showed that 93% of the included advertisements went unnoticed.

This kind of selective attention is focused mostly on advertising banners, which are relatively clearly and logically positioned and dimensioned within the context of advertising contents. For this reason, the increasingly experienced mind of a skilled consumer subconsciously excludes from its focus anything that might be a banner. So the importance mainly lies on experience and traditional advertising proportions, which diminish the reputation of an effective advertising medium from the advertising banners.

In 1998, which was only four years after the first banner appeared, Benway and Lane identified the mentioned drawback as “banner blindness”. What followed were numerous studies on how to bring the banner closer to the consumer, avoid banner blindness, and retain its original advertising purpose. The success of banner advertising depends primarily on the banner’s design and the purpose that makes a visitor browse the web and guides their interests.

If the content of the banner does not correspond to the consumer’s interest, it will sooner or later lose their attention. However, in other cases, it is good to follow the rules for successful banner placement:

• Use the diagonal line from top left to bottom right corner. When a user searches for relevant contents, this is the direction of their quick look through a website.
• Avoid the left and right edges. A user who is focused on finding the content in question subconsciously switches off their conscious peripheral perception and fails to notice the content shown along the side edges.
• The upper edge of the page draws most of the attention, as it is usually reserved for various search engines, menu bars and navigation on the website.
• Be unique, but not intrusive. An unexpected placement or unusual banner size ensure success since they prevent the “banner blindness”. Keep in mind, however, that a disturbing, overly protruding ad can cause more damage to the trademark than a less noticeable, yet subconsciously detected ad.

Banner blindness could also be defined as a consequence of the internet users’ attitude towards advertising banners. In one of its tweets, the Marketing Insider Group boldly described banner ads as the villain of modern marketing. “If #contentmarketing is the hero of modern marketing, then banner ads are the villain.” Via @BrennerMichael

However, we are bold enough to respond to this statement with a solution that raises advertising banners to the level of casual, genuine, non-disturbing and unobtrusive communication. A banner inserted in the email signature of a usual email carries a special seal of credibility. In most cases, the sender of an email is known, so the distribution of such ads is significantly more successful, and the content is noticed with each sent email. Consequently, it turned out that a banner positioned in the lower part of an email has a better reach and CTR than the one inserted at the beginning of an email.

To stand out just enough, AdSigner allows you to position and size an arbitrary banner inside an email signature. Design an ad campaign and make sure to automatically change banners after a certain period of time. Let your signature be dynamic, attractive and professional. Let it be an ever-present element of a pleasant surprise. This way, you will not only successfully avoid banner blindness, but also take advantage of the sales potential of banners within their original meaning and purpose. Furthermore, you will discover that your emails can be a convincing marketing tool of the new era.