The average consumer is exposed to thousands of adverts online every day. In fact, even when you put your phone down and look around you, there are billboards, ads on buses, and all manner of other media vying for our attention.
It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
With that in mind, we’re going to talk about banner blindness in advertising. What is it and how can you effectively overcome / avoid it as a business? Read on and let’s explore it further…
Banner blindness, much as the name suggests, refers to the psychological phenomenon where internet users either willingly or unconsciously ignore banner adverts on a display page.
Other names for banner blindness are: ad fatigue, banner noise, and ad blindness.
The reality is, the modern consumer is wising up to internet marketing. Since 1995, CTR (click-through-rates) on banner ads have dropped from over 2%, to a tidy 0.05%. This is because most banner adverts are, frankly, annoying.
But is there a way to cut through the noise and attract as many of your ideal customers to click on your banner ads as possible? Let’s take a closer look…
There are a number of ways you can overcome banner blindness. Below are four key factors to consider when creating adverts of your own:
Personalization is key
One very effective way to overcome ad fatigue is to personalise your ads as best as possible. For example:
- An outdoor clothing store adding snow to a banner in winter locations.
- Fast-food brands displaying their nearest restaurants for office workers on the late shift.
- A theme park advertising family fun during the summer holidays.
The good news, the technology is there to automatically personalise your ads on the fly based on the viewer. This real-time tailoring is called ‘dynamic creative’.
Video gets more engagement
Video is consistently proving to be more effective in banner ads (often seeing 6x more engagement than static imagery).
Try adding animation, video, or various interactivity elements and see whether or not your CTR improves.
Mobile responsivity is a must
Mobile responsivity is essential in all things online marketing related. If your website isn’t mobile responsive, you’ll be missing out on an awful lot of potential traffic. Similarly, if your banner ads aren’t mobile optimised, then you’ll never reach your true potential.
On average, well-optimised mobile ads see an approximate CTR of 0.09% as opposed to the 0.05% industry standard.
Split-testing, refine, repeat
And finally, if you want to reach optimal performance, you should split-test (A/B test) your banners ads and make regular changes to see which iterations perform best. Something as simple as tweaking the wording in your CTA can make a world of difference.
Think of split-testing as trial and error. Run a few ads, see how they perform, then make a few optimizations and run them again. Which version performs best?
Keep dialling your message in and before long you’ll be able to boost your banner ad engagement considerably.
Conclusion: Hire the professionals
If you don’t have the time to be worrying about the above 4 tips, it may be worth outsourcing your needs to the professionals. This SEO specialist in Brisbane can assist you with your SEO requirements, your social media marketing, and they can help you perfect your PPC campaigns as well.
When in doubt, leave it to the professionals!