THE IMPACT OF ADVERTISING LOCATION AND USER TASK ON

THE EMERGENCE OF BANNER AD BLINDNESS

Marc Resnick, Ph.D.Bentley University

mresnick@bentley.eduhumanfactors.blogspot.com

@PerformSol

Bill Albert, Ph.D.User Experience Center

walbert@bentley.eduwww.bentley.edu/centers/

user-experience-center

Online Advertising

$12.1 Billion in 2010 (Businessweek)$77 Billion in 2016 (Forrester Research)$28 Billion in 2016 just for display ads

(Forbes)

Even though many of us find them annoying, they are not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Banner Blindness Stems from the cognitive phenomenon of inattention

blindness (IB) in which users do not perceive or focus attention on stimuli with a low probability of containing task relevant information

IB for banner ads emerges because users do not expect task relevant information to be contained in banner ads

Banner ads can reliably be predicted to be located on the right side of a web page and to some extent on the top, above the navigation menu – so they are easy to avoid and are a prime candidate for IB. top ad

right ad

Study Objectives

If banner blindness emerges when users expect ads to contain a low probability of task relevant information, what happens when the task does not require specific information?

If the right side is more likely to have advertising than the top, is there more banner blindness for right side ads than top ads?

Is there an interaction between these two influences on user attention?

Method

Home pages of eighteen moderately popular web sites were presented with either a top or right side banner ad

Users were assigned either a goal-directed or a free-viewing task

Eye tracking was used to quantify how much users looked at each area of interest on the web page.

Dwell Time on the Banner Ad

not significantly different

significantlydifferent

bannerblindness

Free Viewing Task and Top Ad

Looked everywhere including the ad and other

typical ad locations

Free Viewing Task and Right Ad

Looked everywhere including the

adand other typical ad locations

Goal Directed Task and Top Ad

Some viewing of the top ad

Viewing concentrated

on the content

Goal Directed Task and Right Ad

Minimal viewing of the

right ad

Viewing concentrated

on the content

Summary

When users have a specific information goal, they only view page areas that are likely to contain relevant information. They have inattention blindness to other locations.

Users are more likely to expect advertising on the right side than the top of the page.

There is an interaction between these two influences◦ users will look at locations that are moderately

likely to contain ads, even in a goal-directed task. ◦ when users do not have a specific information goal,

banner blindness does not emerge.

Practical Implications Banner blindness emerges because users prefer to avoid

attending to advertising when they have specific information to look for – so fooling them by masking advertising is likely to lead to reduced brand preferences.

When users are free viewing, they are OK with looking at ads, so interesting, attractive ads can be valuable.

User behavior was different among the 18 home page designs. The reasons remain unclear but there may be valuable insights into how to design home pages to increase users’ willingness to view ads.

The increase in total dwell time was over 200 ms for unavoided banner ads. Over time, this can lead to significant brand awareness, familiarity, and preference.

Thank You!!