Comments on: Ad Blindness and Online Video

By: Candy

Candy — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 20:25:34 +0000

I definitely ignore the text ads on the sidebar from google searching and in my gmail, but I dislike the banner ads, etc, enough that my husband (a programmer) showed me how to edit my host files to block them all. So I don’t make you any money by watching your videos, sorry

But anyway yes – I agree with what you have to say here. And even though people will continue to learn to ignore adds, if they are targeted and they know this, they will start to look at them when they want them or at least when they think they’ll be funny, which is better than never at all.

By: Charles Iliya Krempeaux

Charles Iliya Krempeaux — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:10:36 +0000

“The solution to “learned ad blindness” (copyright Kevin Nalts) is making ads that appeal to viewers and targeting people based on relevancy.”

That doesn’t always work. Just having an ad that appeals to the user isn’t enough.

You first have to get them to look at the ad, and read it (or watch it if it is a video ad).

And that’s not an easy thing… and is really an art. For anything new you do… user will eventually get used to it, and will eventually learn to ignore it.

If your ad looks different than the rest of the content, user will eventually start to ignore it. And if it looks like the rest of your content, user may stop coming to your site because they consider it “SPAMy”.

In terms of clicks, the best technique I’ve seen is blending ads in with the content… but then you get alot of accidental clicks. (Which can make advertisers unhappy if they are paying per click. And make them bail on you and stop supporting you.) And, like I said, could make you audience members stop visiting your site (because they consider it SPAMy). Not to mention that it can be a “shady” activity if you do it in certain ways.

Google’s text ads did well originally because they were a new thing. Not because there is anything inherently better about text link ads over graphical images. In fact, image ads generally get ALOT more clicks that text link ads.

Really, you need to do things in a way where the user is basically looking for that ad. That’s the advantage Google, Yahoo!, and MSN have on their search pages. The ads on there (on the search result pages) work well because people are looking for that stuff.

That same idea can be translated to non-search pages too. But if help if you know what you are doing.

(Disclaimer: I used to be the Principal Software Engineer at an ad network.)

– Charles Iliya Krempeaux
http://changelog.ca/

By: Marquisdejolie

Marquisdejolie — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 19:27:35 +0000

The solution to “learned video blindness” (copyright Marquisdejolie) is making vids that appeal to viewers (which is other vloggers).

Oh, and targeting videos based on relevancy to the advertising. That’s the key to success!

By: damon

damon — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:25:37 +0000

Hey Nalts. Interesting post. I wonder if the eye-tracking study took into account whether or not the person was searching Google to buy something or not. When I’m looking for a product, I’ll often be as or more interested in the ads than in the regular search results.

(Also, typo in your last sentence: content should be contend.)