What’s the point of running ads if they go unnoticed?
One of the main reasons why you must rethink your strategy is because of ad blindness.
To understand why they go unnoticed, we need to take look at the psychology behind it.
The Detection theory
Filtering unnecessary information is an ability engrain in every human being. Due to this capability, we tend to ignore every type of advertisements that looks similar to the ones we find irrelevant. Even though users don’t look at every ad deliberately, they still see them from the corner of the eye, which makes the brain process the ad.
Along the day, we are programmed to ignore information that we find unappealing, while immediately detect and process every information that we find relevant.
In business terms, what you should do based on this theory is provide your audience with content that is worthwhile.
Here are a few tips to avoid ad blindness:
1. Ad placement
Ad placement is one of the most important factors to avoid ad blindness. If your ad placement in a wrong or common your ad will only receive 30% attention from your audience at most.
The ads near traffic areas will get more viewability and more clicks. To reduce ad blindness, you need to test multiple traffic areas to understand which placement is bringing better results.
It’s important to keep in mind that each website can have a different behaviour due to the design and user experience and for that reason, you must test instead of assuming decisions without real data.
One quick advice: split you campaigns by ad placement and not only by banner size.
2. Ad formats
Be aware that the way you post your ads can lead your users to ad blindness! To avoid that, there are some ad formats you should test.
No one likes ads misplaced that ruin the image of the website. That’s why native advertising is so useful.
Native advertising is when an add is so well placed that looks a part of your site. The main reason why this type of advertising is so effective is because it is unique and personalized, not like the common and boring ads. So, to have effective ads you need to place them where your content is.
The big majority of users prefer to learn about the product throughout the content, they share it more and the engagement is also bigger. If you are or want to be a consumer-centric brand, native ads are the go-to.
Convenience is the word that moves the minds of consumers. Therefore, the more convenient your content, the greater the value it will bring to the consumer. That’s why people love video so much, even in ads!
In fact, people are slowly “disliking” reading and shifting their attention to video. Not to mention that video helps the consumer to understand the product by 74%.
In general, video ads don’t have an issue with ad blindness because users are waiting to see the video.
One quick advice: keep and eye on new ad formats.
3. Create effective ads
People tend to say that the eyes eat first, so a stunning design is what you need to avoid ad blindness. A good and attractive design will catch the eye of the visitor immediately keeping him interested and engaged with your ad. Here are some steps you can take to create effective ads:
- Keep your design simple. Don’t mess up your design with irrelevant information, flashy images or too many colours;
- Use a salient CTA. If you want conversion, you need to be the first to take a step;
- Create interactive ads. Give the users something that makes them feel unique and provides value;
- Use human faces. In the internet people like human faces, so why not use that to your advantage;
- Use some contrast with the rest of the site. By using contrast colours and fonts your ad will immediately catch the user attention.
One quick advice: Create at list 3 differents angles for the same campaign.
4. Ad rotation
Rotating your campaigns with a minimum of ads is something important to avoid ad blindness due to saturation. Based on the amount of traffic you must start your campaign with multiple ads who cover multiple angles, headline and CTA to explore the best results for your campaigns. Beside initial set of ads we recommend you to create routines to add new ads to your campaigns on a regular basis.
One quick advice: Keep at least 3 creatives on each campaign.
If you provide value and serve relevant ads for the real-time user, with the help of our 4 strategies, ad blindness will no longer be a problem!
