Is the web getting trained to ignore AdSense?

[blaze]

I can generally tell in a sub-second glance whether a portion of the screen has been dedicated to AdSense or not and so, naturally, that area quickly enters my blind spot.

Could this be happening on a wider scale?

Or is AdSense so relevant that people are trained to look in that area for interesting links?

I guess it really puts the pressure on Google to do a good targetting job, or otherwise they ruin it for everyone.

[david_uk]

I think provided Adsense can target ads well matched to the page, then ad blindness is much less of a concern. I tried Fastclick contextual ads for a very brief period, and because they weren't targetted well to my niche they didn't get any clicks.

Google's advantage over the competitors is it's huge, diverse inventory of ads, and their technology to deliver good targetting is years ahead of the competition.

A good web page can make a feature of ad blindness. There are sites out there that blend the ads so that you ignore them on a concious level, but subconciously know that when you click them you will get further relevant info.

I personally think that excessive ads produce not only ad blindness, they also cause the visitor to hit the back button without reading content or clicking ads. Maybe the key to ad blindness is knowing it exists and trying to work with it, rather than against it.