Best Ways to Overcome Ad Blindness

Whenever you go online, you see too many ads. Almost every webpage has ads spread across it, at the top, bottom, between the content, and even in the sidebars. Ads have been ingrained into the digital landscape today and internet users have become so used to these ads that they have started consciously or unconsciously ignoring online ads completely. Whether it is banner ads or social ads, a phenomenon known as ad blindness or banner blindness has made them all completely unobtrusive. For advertisers, overcoming banner blindness is crucial for ensuring their digital advertising campaigns are successful.

What Is Ad Blindness?

In digital marketing, banner blindness refers to a phenomenon where internet users either consciously or unconsciously ignore anything on a webpage that looks like an ad or appears in an area that is generally associated with ad placements. Advertising blindness was coined in 1998 and is also known as ad clutter. It was found in the original study that even the most striking banner ads were being ignored for plain text by users who were looking for specific information online. This was later validated in another study, which used eye-tracking tests to reveal that users tend to ignore anything on a webpage that looks like an ad. In fact, any general space that is mostly reserved for advertising becomes a blind spot for users, who simply ignore it.

How to Minimize Ad Blindness

Even small steps count for a lot when it comes to reducing banner blindness and ensuring that your digital marketing efforts don’t become a blind spot for your advertising strategies. Minor adjustments to how you design your ad units can make a huge difference, transforming simple ads into engaging ad experiences.

Reduce the Ad Clutter

The chances of ad blindness increase when the number of ads being displayed on a webpage rises. The first thing that you must do to avoid advertising blindness is to be picky about the websites where your ads are being displayed. It is important to do some research into publisher websites and their ad density. Apart from avoiding websites that display an overwhelming number of ads, it is also important that you steer clear of pages with multiple banner ads at the top of the page, as that is one of the triggers of advertising blindness that prime users to treat any advertising as a blind spot.

Deliver Relevant Ad Content

Ensuring the relevance of ad content is another way to combat ad blindness. People tend to respond to and interact with ads that are relevant to their browsing intent. For example, people looking for spare parts for their cars will not be interested in ads for gold jewelry. However, they may pay attention to animated banner ads about automobile tools. It is important for advertisers to deliver ad content the target audience wants to see, and contextual targeting can be a great solution in this regard.

Use Social Display Ads

One of the best ways to overcome ad clutter is by using innovative ad formats and avoiding the usual, predictable ad formats, styles, and placements. Traditional display ads and banner ads follow a format that makes it clear that users are looking at an ad and not content, which leads to banner blindness. In digital marketing, social media platforms have proven to be highly engaging for audiences. Social display ads create a more authentic experience by converting well-performing social posts into display ads. These ads retain the look and feel of social media content and even contain dynamic social proofs that are updated in real-time, which draws audiences in to interact with the creative.

Skip the Standard Placements

Web users are well-acquainted with ad clutter and know exactly where it can be expected. With the most common places where ads are displayed being the top of the page or the sidebars, advertisers need to consider some non-standard ad placements. Inline with content and interscroller ads are two formats that you can consider here. On the other hand, Interscroller ads appear as banners that appear in line with the web content and reveal the ad content as users scroll on a page. 

Perform A/B Testing

When it comes to creating engaging ads that can overcome banner blindness, every small detail counts. Even a small change can have a significant impact on the click-worthiness and visibility of your ad. With A/B testing, you can compare different ad design variations and determine which ad will perform better. In A/B testing, both ads are run for a set period of time, allowing you to collect performance metrics for both units. Testing can be performed initially to finalize the overall messaging, style, and format of the ad, after which, further testing can be done to fine-tune the ad for optimized performance.

Measure KPIs to Gauge Success in Avoiding Banner Blindness

To optimize your strategies for combating banner blindness in digital marketing, you must first understand how effective the measures you took have been in avoiding ad blindness. For this, you can track, measure, and analyze a number of KPIs, like no. of clicks, conversion rates, cost per click, return of ad spend, etc.

The right tactics can help create ads that get noticed and can cut through advertising blindness. However, it is also important to remember that even if you have a strategy in place for avoiding ad blindness, you should keep adjusting and modifying it regularly to keep up with the constantly evolving trends of the digital marketplace.