The Impact Of Advertising

It’s quite funny to read what an usability expert writes about advertising, banner ads in this case: Jakob Nielsen finds banner blindness where no one would expect something different. Ads, if it’s banners online or billboards offline, don’t get a lot of focused attention and awareness. True. But ads do get a lot of subconscious attention and awareness, especially when they are communicated often and regularly. And:

Even banner ads get a lot of focused attention and awareness if they are targeted to the right people at the right place: We’re measuring click rates from 2 to 17 percent at Gartentechnik.de for example. A current study of Chan Yun Yoo, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Telecommunications, found that people’s memory gets affected by online advertising: explicit and implicit. Who wonders?