What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness

Essentially, banner blindness occurs when users become so accustomed to seeing digital ads that they begin to ignore any creation that resembles them. This might be caused by the natural ability of the human brain to filter out some pieces of information in the process of finding patterns and learning them (and, let’s admit it, we all know what typical digital ads look like).

Sadly, this phenomenon affects not only advertisers whose ad creations don’t serve their purpose; but also publishers, who can suffer a decrease in their ad revenue. How come? Banner blindness can negatively impact ad viewability and ultimately lower the value of your ad inventory! Fortunately, in this case, there are ways to have a cake and eat a cake, which means you can monetize your content and avoid wicked banner blindness.

Ad fatigue

Before we reveal our best ways to combat banner blindness, we must draw your attention to another important term closely related to it – ad fatigue. Although this phenomenon is more connected to advertisers because it causes ad underperformance, it can also affect the publisher’s eCPM (effective Cost Per Mille), leading to a decline in your ad earnings. Ad fatigue happens when the audience is overexposed to the same ad creation, which makes them stop paying attention. Time is precious, so nobody wants to waste it on engaging with the same ads over and over again.

How to avoid banner blindness

By becoming familiar with the most eye-catching areas of the website, you can significantly enhance the visibility of your ads. This is a wise move when trying to maximize the earning potential of your website, blog, or app. In addition to strategic ad slot placement, there are other tactics you can employ to better display ads within your ad inventory and combat banner blindness. Here they are:

• Having more ads on your website, blog, or in your mobile app doesn’t always mean you’ll achieve better results. The Better Ads Experience Program (an initiative created by the Coalition for Better Ads) states that an ad density surpassing 30% can adversely affect and hurt both publishers and users. If there are too many ads, users may struggle to find the information they came for and leave quickly, which will result in a higher-than-usual bounce rate;
• On the other hand, incorporating ads that blend in with the content, such as native ads, can effectively create a more cohesive and positive User Experience. This is due to the Gestalt law of proximity, which suggests that things that are close together are perceived as a unified whole – making the exposure to ads more pleasant for your audience and making ads appear seamlessly within their sight;
• Another great way to deal with banner blindness is by adding rich media ads to your website or app. They usually catch the user’s attention, as they come in many intriguing and engaging formats, such as video, audio, or even a game! Such ads can be interactive and dynamic, which makes them difficult to ignore. Additionally, they tend to have higher CTR (Click-Through Rates) than other types of ads, leading to them being more lucrative;
• Use the right tools, created for boosting monetization effects, like Revenue Booster. It places additional ad slots in the areas of your ad layout that have been identified as the ones with higher user activity. Thanks to such a solution, you don’t have to worry about banner blindness and drops in your ad revenue caused by that. To put that in numbers, applying Revenue Booster can enhance your ad earning by at least 30%! Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

Good news!

Even though problems like banner blindness or blank ads may come along your digital publishing way, there are measures to take in order to fight or even prevent that from happening beforehand. With the proper knowledge and tools, you can sleep well knowing that the processes related to your content monetization run smoothly. Of course, there’s much more when it comes to generating high ad revenue – but with the right partners, you can achieve extraordinary results!