Time to banner blindness

How long will Adsense ads be "new"

[howiejs]

In the really loooooong gooooooogle post - there was one interesting comment:

"Clickthrough rates are continuing to drop on my site though. People are getting too used to the ads :( "

This is a concern that users will become "adsense blind" - like they were banner blind

In the first year - banners were exciting and everyone clicked. Then the CTR dropped 10X over 3 years or so

Any thoughts on the timing when Adsense ads will hit the same "blind" point?

[Sally Stitts]

I think that it will vary by implementation.
It seems that simple border removal has a profound effect on clickthru rate (make border the same color as the background). That, plus all the differing placements, color schemes, etc. make the ads less blatant.

Now, if we could just change some fonts, and fade the "Ads by Goooooooooooogle" tag ...

They can't develop blindness to something they aren't seeing!

[WallyBob]

I suspect that it is only a matter of time before people become more aware of adsense ads and thus tune them out. That's not to say that no one will click but it will become more difficult to "trick" people into clicking by removing borders etc...

[mike schmitz]

You could always start a site like mine where people have to reason to come back and thus they never get bored of the ads.
:)

M

[howiejs]

"You could always start a site like mine where people have to reason to come back and thus they never get bored of the ads."

BUT - the ads are very static (at least from my experience)

So why would a repeat user keep clicking the same ad / creative / advertiser?

[morpheus83]

By the time people start ignoring google ads. Google will allow to integrate ads in such a way that there wont be a visible difference between content and ads. It may allow to apply CSS etc which only premium advertisers are allowed.

[Galtego]

I agree that the subtlety of integration will be increased as necessary. Before that, to the extent that the ads lead to relevant, useful, and pleasing pages, ad blocks will be ever new because they are a frame for changing content, much like browser software itself, containing many things. The changing part of that should improve as more advertisers join and existing advertisers diversify their offerings.

[adfree]

Blend-in ads have worked well for me all along, users recognize the additional resource as exactly this and not an annoyance.

[Jenstar]

For sites with mostly repeat visitors, some publishers temporarily knock em over the head with brightly colored ads (ie. think red background and yellow text) to get them noticed again. While it can ruin the esthetics of just about every site, it can get people noticing them again if banner blindness has set in.

Others use the ad rotation feature and do three blending and the fourth in the knock em over the head style.

[loanuniverse]

I don't think is a matter of banner blindness as the drop in my case is too large to be attributed to that alone. I would expect that banner blindness would occur slowly over time not in the form of double-digit percentage drops from one month to another.

My theory has always been that Google keeps playing around with Targetbot and doing so benefits some sites while punishing others. It might also be due to an increase of PSAs as Adserverbot gets confused when you ad a second ad unit.

In my case, I have seen a marked decrease in actual number of clicks from what I experienced in August to the first 13 days of September. This tells me that something funky happened on September 1st.

-It could be that the number of PSAs have increased and my visitors do not see the ads.
-It could be that targeting is off due to targetbot changes.

I don’t think banner blindness will ever set in due to relevance. We might get hit with a lower normal CTR eventually, but contextual ads are here to stay.

[hyperkik]

We know at least one thing that happened on Sept. 1, and it was pretty big - multiple ad units were introduced for all publishers.