Overcoming Banner Blindness and Ad Fatigue

[Free Takeaway Inside – Implementation Guide for Omnichannel Marketing and Personalization]

Source - Marketoonist

When was the last time you paid attention to a banner or display ad campaign, or clicked on an email promotion?

Can’t really recall or never?

Well, according to a study by Infolinks, 86% of consumers experienced a phenomenon of ad fatigue known as Banner Blindness.

Banner blindness, as implied by its name, is a term that was coined in 1998 where people tend to purposefully overlook banners as annoying or irrelevant.

In addition, most people’s email inbox is buried in a sea of spam. Nearly half of the respondents in a survey received between 61 to 200 emails per week. Nobody has the time to view, let alone respond to or click on links in the email.

That means the majority of your ad campaigns may go unnoticed.

But the good news is that you can prevent your prospects or customers from ignoring your campaigns.

Here are six reasons why your ad campaigns are ignored and what you can do to minimize the risk of going unnoticed:

1. They are Interruptive

It’s estimated that roughly 42% of internet users worldwide have installed ad blockers. Many people tend to find ads including pop-ups, email subscription alerts, and gated content forms as annoying or intrusive. Also, 82% of people have closed a webpage because of an auto-playing video ad.

Solution: Effective ads must be unobtrusive and integrate seamlessly into a site. To that end, native ads that blend in organically within a web page, social networks or search results are more effective than other ad placements. Studies have revealed that they had 2x more engagement and 200% higher CPMs (cost per mile) than standard banner ads.

2. They are often Irrelevant

The irrelevancy of ads is often the root cause of campaign fatigue and banner blindness. Since audiences find the ads irrelevant to their needs and preferences, they ignore them. Almost half of the consumers will disregard a brand if it bombards them with irrelevant ads. In contrast, more than one-third or 36% of them bought from a brand that sent them tailored messages or offers.

Solution: The brands that cut through the clutter and succeed understand their customers’ behaviour online. They turn insights into intelligence that enables personalized and targeted advertising. A meaningful ad engagement with consumers needs a strategic approach that uses messaging that is appropriate to both the device and the context of users. 

Here’s a free download of an implementation guide to executing omnichannel marketing and personalization without being intrusive

3. They are not Appealing Enough

Another reason why audiences ignore your ad campaigns is that they are not compelling and appealing enough to grab their attention. Audiences tend to scan through their screens and if an ad does not immediately catch their attention, it gets overlooked.

Solution: Here are some design principles to help you think outside the banner ad box and increase your CTR with digital advertising:

·     Keep your design simple and group relevant information together using the principle of proximity and hierarchical arrangement.

·     Use sufficient contrast within ad elements such as imagery, typography, background, website color scheme, etc. to catch the viewer's attention.

·     Place a prominent CTA that stands out in your ad and entices audiences to click.

·     Use human faces or directional cues to create a pleasant flow in your ads.

·     Create interactive ads using rich media content and deliver more than an electronic billboard to your audiences.

·     Test your ads using A/B and multi-variate testing to ensure all design elements work effectively to elicit optimal views and clicks.

4. Privacy Concerns about Targeted Ads

In 2021, Google blocked 3.4 billion bad ads as they violated the platform’s advertising policies. 63% of consumers in a survey viewed targeted ads that incorporated personal data as an invasion of their privacy.

Moreover, 45% of ad blocker users claimed that they will avoid companies that target them with overly personalized and intrusive ads. Consumers’ concerns about privacy are only increasing and they desire more control over their experience when browsing online.

Solution: Businesses must be mindful of how they collect user data for their websites and advertising, and adjust their strategy to adapt to users’ concerns about online privacy. They must obtain consent from their customers before collecting their data and targeting them with personalized ads. They need to also empower their customers with the flexibility to control their privacy and permission preferences whenever they want.

5. Slows down Web Browsing Experience

Users abandon a web page when it takes a long time to load due to pop-ups or extra code for ads to render on the screen. In a study, it was found that about 60% of the total loading time of a page was caused by scripts that place adverts. Particularly, embedding video ads can impact page loading speed to a great extent. In fact, even Google Chrome has started to block web ads that utilize a disproportionate amount of system resources.

Solution: Test your ads and ensure that they don’t hamper browser performance before rolling them out. Compress images and video size so that they don’t compromise page speed. You can also implement lazy loading of certain ads. Use caching and other mechanisms to minify the code and ad scripts on your site.

6. They are Repetitive

Seeing the same types of ads or offers every time you watch a YouTube video or browse through social networks can become annoying for the viewers. The incessant nature of repetitive ads leads to the onset of a negative association with the company and its messages.

Solution: While repetitive advertising is unavoidable for brands to promote awareness, there are ways to produce ads that don’t annoy your audience. Firstly brands have to find the right balance in ad frequency to prevent over-exposure of ads. They need to maintain a contact and response history in their campaign management system. This will help them to track whether the recipient has already responded or if not, send them a different type of ad in a different format to prevent repetition. Rotating ad formats and creative will let you stay on top of audiences’ minds and combat fatigue.

All in all, the growing resentment towards ad campaigns is primarily because of consumers’ distrust of product-centric ads that push them towards a sale. However, if the ads are centered on your audiences and their needs, it’s likely to win their attention.

The book Beyond Advertising states that, “Today’s ads now compete not just with other ads, but millions of moments of entertainment online. Therefore brands must differentiate their advertising approach and manage campaigns strategically with their target audience at the center. An effective ad campaign is one that delivers value without alienating audiences.