Text Advertising Blindness: The New Banner Blindness?
Justin W. Owens, Barbara S. Chaparro, and Evan M. Palmer
Journal of Usability Studies, Volume 6, Issue 3, May 2011, pp. 172 - 197
Abstract
Banner blindness, the phenomenon of website users actively ignoring web banners, was first reported in the late 1990s. This study expands the banner blindness concept to text advertising blindness and examines the effects of search type and advertisement location on the degree of blindness. Performance and eye-tracking analyses show that users tend to miss information in text ads on the right side of the page more often than in text ads at the top of the page. Search type (exact or semantic) was also found to affect performance and eye-tracking measures. Participant search strategies differed depending on search type and whether the top area of the page was perceived to be advertising or relevant content. These results show that text ad blindness occurs, significantly affects search performance on web pages, and is more prevalent on the right side of the page than the top.
Practitioner’s Take Away
The findings in this study suggest that users experience text advertising blindness. Users were less successful, reported more task difficulty, and took longer to find information when it was embedded in text advertisements positioned at the top and the right side of the page.
Practitioners should realize the following about text advertisements:
- Users demonstrate text advertisement “blindness” when viewing web pages. This means that information displayed in areas of the page dedicated to text ads (e.g., top of the page, right side) is generally ignored or viewed last.
- Users are less likely to find information on a web page if it is located on the right side of the page than on the top of the page if both areas resemble text ads. This is especially true when they are searching for specific information.
- When conducting an informational, or semantic, search, users have equal amount of difficulty finding information that is embedded in an ad either at the top or on the right side of the page.
- The perception of whether a region is perceived as advertising affects how web pages are searched. When a region is seen as advertisements, users will scan the area if it necessitates completing their task and will likely do so only after scanning other content areas. However, if the region is perceived as content, users will integrate the area into their search strategy, possibly as an expected location for their search goal or a location covered by a heuristic.
- Users typically associate the right side of a web page with text ads and consequently view this area of the page last or not at all. As a result, both designers and advertisers should use caution when placing content information on the right side of the page.
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Text Advertising Blindness: The New Banner Blindness?