Our digital strategist Morten wrote his bachelor's thesis on the noticeability of banner ads on news portals. Here is a short summary of the results.
Working in digital marketing on a daily basis, I decided that the thesis had to be related to my field of expertise, which would allow me to develop and create a discussion specifically on online advertising.
The aim of my bachelor's thesis was to study the noticeability of banner ads on news portals, taking into account the positions of content banners, header banners and tower banners displayed on desktop. It was also investigated whether the noticeability of content banners and header banners was higher when a static or animated web banner was used.
The data collection tool was an experiment using an eye-tracking device, followed by a semi-structured interview with the participants of the experiment. The main task of the eye-tracking experiment was to browse the Delfi news portal, where advertisements were placed in specific locations. During the interview, the participants had to answer questions related to the experiment, which gave an idea of the participant's general attitude towards online advertising.
As a result of the work, complete advertising blindness was not observed, and the noticeability of advertising banners did not depend on the position of the advertisements on the news portal. Rather, it can be concluded that people are able to distinguish advertisements from online content and ignore them.
Banners are noticed, but they are not delved into. However, the delving into them is influenced by various factors, such as a specific need for a product/service, which determines the consumer's susceptibility to advertising. The structure of the portal itself and its familiarity also affect the noticeability of advertising - an experienced portal user recognizes the content of the portal and can ignore the positions of advertisements at first glance. By frequently visiting the portal, the visitor to the news portal learns the style and repetition of the web content, which makes it possible to follow a certain pattern in the case of repeated visits. Similarly, the participants in the experiment also answered that they consciously look for headlines, which is why the respondents also thought that they could distinguish advertising banners from news.
When comparing animated and static advertising, there was no overall difference in viewing time, which is why it can be concluded in the case of a moving banner that the elements that were displayed at the end of the moving advertising banner may not be seen by the observers at all. The web visitor is exposed to the animation cycle, but they do not pay attention to the entire cycle, which is why they may notice fewer details that would allow them to remember the banner later. A similar line of thought can be applied to the speed of browsing or scrolling the web, where the web visitor, so to speak, creates movement on the web page, which is why there is less time for processing information for both static and moving banners. As a result, it is known that the advertisement was seen, but it is not possible to fully remember what the advertisement was and what message the advertisement carried.
While doing my bachelor's thesis, I concluded that the darkness of advertising could not be observed, because all the advertisements were watched and partly remembered. Rather, the problem lies in delving into the advertisements, because at times the brands behind the advertisements could not be specifically named or what was depicted in the advertisement could not be accurately described.
This work is a brief overview of the noticeability of online advertisements by young people and provides food for thought for people working in both media and creative agencies.
