Banner blindness in an ad age
Watching this weirdly beautiful web video ad by Prada, which was animated by James Jean, one wonders where internet advertising is really going. Recently, in Advertising Age, in a highly entertaining article titled "Think Different: Maybe the Web's Not a Place to Stick Your Ads", Matthew Creamer suggested that we're all missing the point. Among those Creamer interviewed was Jakob Nielsen, the High Priest of Usability, and the Dane spoke about "banner blindness" — the tendency of the eyes to ignore content in banners on websites. He said that search-engine text ads work because people who encounter them are often looking to buy something, which is many search in the first place. But the same doesn't apply to those intrusive "skyscraper" display ads, which Nielsen believes "aren't very well-suited for the web" because they're artefacts of old media thinking. Nielsen quote:
"Most of the times I use the web, I go to get something done, and I don't want to be distracted. With television, I might want a more relaxing, absorbing experience."
Will that change if internet video continues to improve and the web becomes more like TV? To show you how hot this meme is, on Sunday Andrew Sullivan took time off from banging the Obama drum and declared, "Do not adjust your set: TV is about to blow apart". But back to Creamer's article: "There's huge financial incentive to say advertising works," Mr. Nielsen said. "To say that it doesn't work — I don't get anything out of that." Indeed. If the future of the web is mobile, as many believe it will be, then banner ads are going to have an even smaller chance of success because screen size will militate against their format. Useful text ads, or immersive visual (televisual?) experiences like those provided by Prada, hint at what might be the winning formulas.
