Text Ad Blindness? Adsense Blindness?

[Linda Buquet]

When the proliference of Adsense type copy cats started to multiply, I wondered how long it would take consumers to start developing "text ad blindness". I just read an article complete with an eye tracking heat map, over at the Blog Herald which points to the The MIT Advertising Lab?s Blog about an upcoming study being released by Jakob Nielsen.

This info is something affiliate marketers should be aware of and will probably have an impact on how blogs are monetized in the future. The bottom line being that text link ads within copy still seem to convert well, but banks of text links in the right column of the page - that look similar to Adsense, may not get click-through rates as well as they once did.

<blockquote>?Is ?text-box blindness? getting to be as bad as ?banner blindness?? We don?t know yet, but in our eyetracking study, users didn?t look at the Google ads in the right-hand margin of this page any more than they did banner ads.?</blockquote>
Read the rest and study the heat map over at The Blog Herald <a target="_new" href="http://www.blogherald.com/2006/03/27/3445/">AdSense Blindness</a>

I admit when Adsense was new, I told lots of affiliates to create affiliate links in the sidebar that looked like Adsense. Now with YPN, BriteAds and all the other text ad companies mimicing Adsense, it's probably not such a great strategy. What do you think?

 

[its_me_shaners]

I completely agree with that assessment. I think it will be particularly prevalent on the seasoned blogger. I know for myself I dont think I "see" them. But when I am at a blog that has ads I click on them as a form of blogger support.
But back to the theme... I watch as my goilfriend surfs and she clicks away at ads when she sees them. Im gonna ask her if I can actually watch her surf and question her why she clciks on ads next time.
What I gleaned from joel comms book, was to make the ads appear like theyre not ads at all, well dont paraphrase that I'd suggest getting the book if I were you. NO Im not including an aff link for it.
But good thoughts though for sure.
I think this is gonna be a challenge. Some cheaky moneky will come up with a tactic to overcome it though, just you watch.

 

[KLB]

This study show similar results that Google shows on the heat map they provide AdSense publishers. Basically the right hand side has never really gained the kind of attention the left side of a page does because the English langauge goes from left to right.

Two or three years ago I switched my ads on my environmental chemistry site from the right hand side of the page (to the right of the right menu) to the left side of the page where they are now and my click through rate immediatly improved very drastically. Another thing I did was remove the border around ads as borders can act like a fence for the eyes and prevent them from leaving the content area of a page.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Another thing I did was remove the border around ads as borders can act like a fence for the eyes and prevent them from leaving the content area of a page.

Very good point Ken. Plus if the ads have standard text boxes like people are used to seeing with Adsense ads, I imagine they are more prone to overlook them.

 

[its_me_shaners]

i'll tell you what I have been and what I think we all as online money making people should be doing. I show some love when I view a site, or blog, by clicking on the ads. I mean really it takes no time at all to do and its like a vote of confidence for the site or blog.

 

[KLB]

i'll tell you what I have been and what I think we all as online money making people should be doing. I show some love when I view a site, or blog, by clicking on the ads. I mean really it takes no time at all to do and its like a vote of confidence for the site or blog.

This is a very bad way of showing love and is little more than click fraud. I personally do not want my readers clicking on my ads unless they are truly interested in what my ads have to offer. Simply clicking on my ads to reward my efforts is nothing short of stealing from my advertisers and in the long run devalues the value of clicks from my website. In the end this could do more harm to the website than it does good because advertisers won't be willing to pay as much for clicks on my site or may simply find that advertising on content sites is not cost effective.

 

[maiko2299]

Nice things to think about. I will admit I have Created my own affiliate links that looked like an adsense ad. That worked alright for me Because I cheated a little one of the things that I have done was make the ad stand out a little better than the adsense ad. I made a mouse over button that when the mouse went over the ad the entire ad turned red!

I think people wanted to see just for curiosity "what the heck was going on with this crazy ad?" For this type of method all you could hope for is an eye catching phrase on the affiliate site that grabs your "non targeted traffic".

Getting people to the site is half the battle how you do it just might be a winning solution for you. My conversion rates did increase as a result.

Ken as far as the adsense on the left hand side I with you on that. I would also recommend throwing a few ads in the main body of your page. A few less ads than the left hand side. They seem to do better.

Blindness to ads that is me. I scroll right down past those things. Only because I know what the things are all about. Not all people know about marketing nor do they have a clue as to what happens when they click on those ads.

This was fun to discus this content. Heck you could write about anything and that's why I love the internet!

Michael

 

[its_me_shaners]

ok I may ave a misunderstanding as to what click fraud is, but isnt that when you click your own ads? Woopsies on my part.

 

[KLB]

ok I may ave a misunderstanding as to what click fraud is, but isnt that when you click your own ads? Woopsies on my part.

It is that, but it is also clicking on ads that you aren't interested in, but are clicking anyways so that you can "help support" the website you are on. It is fraud because you are forcing the advertiser to pay the website a fee even though you weren't interested in their product/service.

In the long run this type of "support" can hurt websites because it lowers the conversion rates of clicks to desired action (e.g. buying something) and thus lowers the value of clicks to advertisers. If advertiers see that they are getting a lower ROI (return on investment) from advertising on content sites than they do with advertising on search results, they will lower the amount they are willing to bid and spend on advertising on content sites. It will also cause some advertisers to abandon advertising on content sites all together.

As an example of this, my chemistry site sees a very high seasonal fluctuation in traffic based on the school calendar. During the winter months the number of clicks I get goes way up, however, the average amount I earn per click (PPC) goes way down. As a result I see a comparably small fluctuation in revenues from the winter when kids are making greater use of my website and the summer when there are few kids visiting my site and most of the traffic is coming from professionals. Part of the cause of the lowering PPC is simply caused by more people clicking on ads that they aren't really interested in.

 

[Eminem]

True,

Clicking on ads when you don't really mean to might damage the CPC of your site.

However, face it...there are like 10 out of 100 people who click because they want to know/ get more information about the relevant ads displayed