Since some of the user testing i have done shows this, why would i want to waste my advertising budget on something people overlook?
this truly makes no sense to me:( If you have any information that shows it gets a customer to come in and actually buy, i would be interested to see it. I have a small budget and can't really afford to place it where it is invisible.
tg
I can tell you from my personal experience (and my AdWords bill) that people definitely do not overlook my ads.
Why? Because my mind knows where the ads are and i don't care to see them.
What about your customers? Do they all look past these ads too? Are you sure?
You may be able to ignore the advertising at the top of the page, but millions of folks click through. We have run AdWords for quite awhile now and have had great results. IMO, it's an excellent ROI, for us.
I'll search around and see if I can find a few threads that might help.
I agree.
And their editors are reasonable people.
As in any industry, the people behind the scenes are sometimes blinded by the actual industry they are in.
The end user obviously DOES notice these ads, otherwise the bids would not be high and nobody would be making any money.
Guaranteed there are is a % of people who do NOT click on paid listing for 1 reason or another.
Same scenario with banners, personally I am blind to them, unless the creative is "Out of this world", however the CTRs are still there resulting in conversions.
Shak
They think the free section is poor (even though it's their fault) and many then look down the ads - which if done right are targetted perfectly.
Besides search engine ads are not banner ads. There are a bunch of people in fact who claim they appear to be too much like regular listings and are deceptive. While these critics generally say Google does a better job than others in distinguishing sponsored listings, it does not completely escape their ire.
Even the great "some people call me Jakob" claims that SE ads are not like other online ads. Of course, he's on Googles payroll.
In my experience, not only do these things get clicked on but I have one product where I get about a 20% better conversion on ads than regular listings and the average sale is about 50% more.
As others have pointed out, the proof is in the pudding. Grab a credit card, get out of the lab, and see for yourself.
And insane marketers who want to prove the ad is working just because someone clicks on it. You have to wonder if TV would have made it as far as it has if every person who put a commercial out had said "If people don't go directly and immediatly out and buy my product after seeing my commercial, then I won't pay to put it on TV"
I'd say, try adwords out. I don't care how small your budget is, you have enough to test it. When we first tested adwords, we set one ad out and put our budget at $5 a day. In less than a week we had seen that it indeed worked.
Since some of the user testing i have done shows this, why would i want to waste my advertising budget on something people overlook?
I think the thing to remember is that people wouldn't be doing it if it didn't work. Google Adwords would become a ghost town very quickly if there was no return being achieved by advertisers. Before you discount them, review and refine your methods. You may have overlooked something.
But it is true, for some people & sites the adwords system of advertising may just not work. (Due to topic, competitor superiority, etc.) But the sheer mass of ads you see on searches should instantly tell you adwords are anything but overlooked, and are worthwhile to many advertisers and surfers alike.
Now, even on my own searches for products I want to buy, I will check the adwords ads. They tend to be very pointed to my keywords I am searching on. The search results as we all know can be tilted by SEO’s and sometimes are just plain mucky. Adwords has worked well for us and allowed us to have a much broader range in the results. We tend to target our site keywords to relevant and expensive adwords. Then we target out adword ads to the cheaper and less relevant keywords we could not stuff into our page.
Old out of date links, i.e. (last updated 1996)
Broken links
Unrelated links
Places i've been before
Companies I don't like
Obvious spam-type sites
It happens...
i don't even see any of the paid ads. Why? Because my mind knows where the ads are and i don't care to see them.
Even when you are shopping for products? I find ads a sort of QA. If they can afford adwords and clued-in enough to do it, they just might have the product I'm looking for.
As others have pointed out, you dont pay for the ads until people click on them, so the massive increase in ads does suggest that people are clicking.
figment >>>>"Banner Blindness" is a completely myth propgated by usability people
Really? It is absolutely NO myth that banner clicks reduced fast after the novelty wears off and people became wary of the advertisers. "Banner blindness" was only relative. They ARE seen by people who are actually looking for something to buy, but the expectations that the majority of web surfers were on the web mainly to buy was the real myth - spun by advertisiing networks and industry in particular.
In the end an ad or a banner will be seen by those actially looking for a product or service, and those that are highly relevant to a surfer's interest or keyword search. Banner blindness IS real and did occur because for too long they were often very broad and unrelated a surfers real interests.
Google adwords provide a very intelligent way of delivering relevant product and service mesages to intelligent people. Its one sign that the Web medium is starting to grow out of adolescence.
How about the line:
I have done branding experiments and see the data first-hand where people had been exposed to banners have an improved brand impression over those not exposed even when they fail to recall the impression.
1) This is no lie, I was skeptical myself, but I collected and analyzed some data personally and have conversed with others who have seen similiar results.
2) Even though CTR's are down, people do still click on banners.
3) Many people like to convince themselves that they are not swayed by any advertising. People like to hold to the idea that their opinions are somehow real and concrete.
No problem at all... a pleasure...
But all sarcasm aside, we are basically agreeing are we not?
I can hardly quote your whole post, and the results of your experiment are consistent with my views.
To that extent i agree that there is a branding effect over and above whether people actually click or now. But that hardly justifies saying that "banner blindness" is a complete myth.
People have just got used to focusing on the content, and have developed perceptual skills to ignore things that look like banners - when their motivation for going to a page is to find out info. Now of course if they are going to a page for the express purpose of buying or comparing or searching for commercial products, they will be far less blind to banners! Also if the banner or ad is relevant to the reason for viewing the page, or is positioned in an original way and in context with content or motovation for visiting the page they are far more likely to have some sort of impression.
That is why Google adwords is so good. It provides data for both the information seeker, and the buyer. Their motivation for going to page determines which of these elements are more "visible" to them. Look to the left for info, opinion, news, reviews etc; look to the right for ads.
I still feel your statement that banner blindess is a "complete myth" is somewhat of an overstatement, let alone the spurious causal relationship with "usability" experts. But we are agreeing in essence.
We run a number of sites across all business sectors. On many sites, we are number 1 on Google. For a few terms, 1 and 2. For one we have 7 positions in the top 10.
However, shock horror - even on the positions where we have Google nailed we still use Adwords. Quite simply because it works and is cost-effective. For the vast majority I agree there is 'banner blindness' however I'm greedy. I want the majority and the small minority who suffer from listing blindness.
Think about it.. Google is stuffed with guys like us who are 'playing the game' to get numbers 1-10 on Google stuffed with our sites. The guys and girls on the right hand side are paying for the privilege and therefore have something that they believe should be promoted at a price.
A small minority of savvy browsers will click these ads first. In this case I have them. My 2p worth - use adwords as part of a calorie controlled diet and you'll gain ££££££s
What you are overlooking is the fact that since they are pay for click, if nobody sees them and nobody clicks on them, you have not spent any of your advertising budget.
Thanks for the info. I see your points:) So, I am going to sign up for AdWords and see what comes from it.
Its true, i have blinded myself to ads because I go online basically for info. And who knows, maybe in the little usability testing I did I subconsciously created scenarios where people would do what I was expecting them to do.
So, wish me luck, I'm off to Google:)
trulygreat
Most people aren't looking to find out if text is paid or not, they're looking for something to stand out. That said, I do have friends who never looked at the adwords because they thought it was "netty-stuff" like quote of the day,joke of the day, etc. They were looking for a product or info and didn't expect to see it apart from the listings in the main body.
I have learned something truly valuable from Adwords..I get a great click thru, but people aren't hanging on the site or looking for the deeper pages. This is good news? Nope. but now I know that whatever I'm selling them with in a three line pitch isn't carrying thru once they hit the site.
I paused my ad so I won't waste good visitors while I figure out if my site is loading too slowly or something else is preventing a sticky connection once they arrive. but without Adwords, I might not have noticed this in time to correct it. Well worth my 48 bucks!
dian :)
