What Is Ad Blindness? How To Overcome Banner Blindness

Has the advertising blindness riddle left you with analysis paralysis? Tackle advertising blindness head-on. Your audience wants what you’re selling. By learning how to detect banner ad blindness, and finding strategies to overcome it, you’ll connect users’ minds to your brand’s heart. From here, measuring success is the fun part.

Understanding ad blindness will help you take the guesswork out of online advertising and boost your profitability for each campaign.

What Is Ad Blindness?

We can predict who might come to a page with great confidence, but we can’t truly predict how they will behave when they arrive. The human factor. Are they relaxed or stressed? Distracted or focused? Hungry, angry, lonely, or tired? All of these emotional and psychological states can contribute to what the industry calls ad blindness or banner blindness.

Not unlike the eye flaps racehorses wear to keep focused on the track ahead, whether consciously or unconsciously, consumers ignore banner ads and other forms of online advertising as they scroll toward their goal. If the ad doesn’t fit their agenda for the visit—getting that recipe, the five tips for dressing for success, or the latest stock advice—they keep racing ahead.

To pull consumers out of this ad stupor, a variety of techniques can be employed to better understand their online behavior and to adjust your ad strategy accordingly.

How To Detect Banner Ad Blindness

The size and scope of your campaigns will determine the level of research and support needed to gain insight into online consumer behavior and ad performance. One option is eye-tracking or usability tests, which determine what people are paying attention to and how they are interacting with ads in their journey. Heat mapping gives a bird’s eye view of areas getting the most love, while gaze plots track where eyeballs are roving, in what order, and for how long.

Getting direct feedback also steers ad strategy. User surveys or advertising research help ID what type of ads appeal to your audience before you launch. To capitalize on the growing sophistication of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, consider upfront research, and ongoing monitoring against key performance metrics. Track how often ads are overlooked and course correct in real-time. Other emerging trends include AI and machine learning integrations, augmented reality, and native advertising.

Expand your knowledge about diversifying ad formats to increase ad viewability.

Strategies To Overcome Ad Blindness

What’s the secret sauce in estimating CPMs? Beyond Ad Formats, there are multiple strategies for impacting audience interaction with your ads. Consider: 

• Optimize ad placements: The most viable space isn’t always where you expect it; uncluttered spaces or below the fold locations where viewers spend the most time absorbing content may be viewed longer.

• Use bold design storytelling: Link audience-appropriate visuals to strong CTAs, using emotional appeal to grab user focus and spark an “I wonder…” moment that leads to a click.

• Diversify ad formats to yield stronger results: A combination of Video, Interactive Ads, or High-Impact Ads powers-up your campaign and maximizes user engagement with the content your audience wants.

• Personalize content to increase relevance and engagement: This involves helping the user have a more enjoyable experience interacting with your brand, like tailoring ad campaigns to your target audiences’ device sizes, screen resolutions, and formats in real-time.

See how we used programmatic marketing to help Hasbro increase its ad click-through rates by 237%.

How To Measure Success Over Advertising Blindness

Effective measurement takes the guesswork out of the equation. Knowing your goals and benchmarking against them involves careful evaluation before, during, and after the campaign conclusion. We’ve already discussed eye-tracking and usability tests. A/B Testing is another method of discovery pre full campaign launch. The resulting metrics will offer insight into which design and message resonate strongest with your audience.

It cannot be stressed enough how important it is to use analytics to track engagement rate improvements, click-through rates, and conversions. Be dedicated when reviewing the metrics against your KPIs. Other behavior campaign metrics like the number of impressions, share of voice, reach, and engagement will provide a holistic view of overall ad effectiveness. The data will tell if your ad strategy is a happy story or a digital tragedy.

Since understanding your return on ad spend is commensurate to the resulting ad revenue, be courageous and face the data

Combat Banner Blindness With Next Millennium’s Programmatic Advertising Solutions

Note to self, it’s impossible to figure out the right prescription for effectively combating banner blindness on your own. This is a vastly complex arena, unfortunately, where mistakes can be costly and missteps fruitless.

Maximizing your investment will maximize your results; this is proven. Compare it to putting one-quarter into a three-quarter slot machine. You may win but will miss the larger prize. By taking the time to identify signs of banner ad blindness within your campaign, course correcting with targeted strategies, and measuring accurately, you can begin to see a clearer path forward. 

Ultimately, true advertising success begins with using technology to automate the buying, selling, and serving of online advertisements through programmatic advertising solutions. It’s a powerhouse method that facilitates programmatic advertising across multiple platforms.

At Next Millennium, we act as this middle person between advertisers and publishers for digital marketing needs—offering exclusive access to premium brands, leading industry technologies, and proactive customer support.

Ready to ditch those disappearing ads? Book a discovery call and learn why we are trusted by the world’s leading publishers and pundits.