What is banner blindness?
Banner blindness refers to a type of selective attention where web visitors consciously or subconsciously ignore any information that is presented in the form of a banner. This typically stems from a web visitor’s desire to avoid interacting with anything that could distract them from what they are trying to accomplish.
If you wish to learn more about this concept, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: What is the impact of banner blindness?
Depending on how you use banners, it can negatively impact either your ad revenue or conversion rate (or both at the same time).
In terms of ad revenue, if your web visitors do not even notice your banner ads, then there is no chance they will click on them. In fact, even those that notice these ads do not always click on them. Of course, if no one clicks on your banner ads, then you cannot make money off of them.
In terms of your conversion rate, on the other hand, if you are using banners to pitch your own products and services and people ignore them, then you will not get any conversions. It does not matter if you want your web visitors to download something, make a purchase, or sign up for something, if they do not see your calls to action (CTAs), then they will not do what you need them to do.
Needless to say, if you have banner ads and banner offers on your website, if you can get people to notice them, then both your ad revenue and conversion rate would drop.
Question #2: What causes banner blindness?
As we have seen earlier, in most cases, banner blindness stems from a web visitor’s desire to not get distracted from what they are hoping to accomplish. They simply want to get to the content they are looking for faster, and they will ignore everything else—either on purpose or subconsciously—along the way.
But there is also another reason banner blindness occurs: an innate aversion towards ads.
Ads, by design, have always been disruptive—and we are being bombarded by different ads every single day. It is no accident that we eventually learned to just tune them out. How else would we get anything meaningful done if we pay attention to every single ad that we encounter, right?
Question #3: How can I avoid banner blindness?
To avoid banner blindness, there are a couple of things you can try, such as:
- Revising the design of your banners
- Revising the design and layout of the page where the banners appear
- Making your banners look more ‘organic’
- Using a different ad format
Revising the design of banners simply means trying to make them more eye-catching by using different colours, fonts, and layouts as well as incorporating animated elements.
Revising the design and layout of the page where the banners appear means trying to find the least disruptive way to display your banner ads. The goal is to make them flow naturally with the rest of the content on the page.
Making your banners look more ‘organic’ means not making them look like ads at all. Use the same fonts, colors, and designs for them as the rest of your website.
Finally, using a different ad format just means choosing the right ad format for the page. It is possible that the banner format just does not go well with the design of the page.
Question #4: Does banner blindness also happen on mobile?
Yes. Unfortunately, banner blindness also happens on mobile devices. In fact, a poor banner layout may have an even bigger impact in this case given the significantly smaller screen sizes.
A poorly placed banner could easily end up blocking the rest of the content on a page, completely ruining the experience for the user. But even if it does not, the fact that it would require web visitors to do extra swipes just to get to the content they are looking for could still negatively impact their experience.