What might banner blindness look like in practice?

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Banner blindness is a phenomenon that almost every brand that does online marketing struggles with. Users, overwhelmed by the amount of marketing messages, subconsciously ignore banner ads, even if they might be interesting to them.

Is there a way to counteract this problem and effectively reach your audience? In this article, we will explore the topic of banner blindness, its causes, and ways to get around it.

Table of contents of the article:
What is banner blindness?

What are the causes of banner blindness?
How to counteract banner blindness and increase ad visibility?
How do online platforms deal with banner blindness?
Can we completely eliminate banner blindness?
Summary
What is banner blindness?

The term "banner blindness" refers to the phenomenon in which Internet users intentionally or subconsciously ignore advertising content, particularly in the form of banners. The phenomenon was first identified in 1998 in UX ( user experience ) research, which found that people ignore elements that look like advertisements, even if they may contain relevant information.

In an era of thousands of ads being displayed every day, our brains naturally filter the excess information, focusing on what we consider to be the most important. This is a defense mechanism that makes ads lose their appeal, and marketers must reach for increasingly creative ways to reach their audiences.


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What might banner blindness look like in practice?
Banner blindness was brilliantly illustrated by Nielsen usa telegram data Norman Group in one of its studies. The study conducted by the company used the eye-tracking technique (in short, tracking the eye movements of the person taking part in the study).

Based on the data collected by the company, a so-called heatmap was created averaging the places where respondents looked most often when browsing selected websites. I am posting a photo of the map below.

heat map – banner blindness

Source: Nielsen Norman Group

The areas marked in red represent the places where the study participants looked most often, the yellow ones – slightly less often, and the blue ones – much less often. The areas in gray are places that did not attract any attention from the participants. The green rectangles were added after the study was conducted and indicate the places where the ads appeared.

It would be hard to find a better visualization of how banner blindness works. The graphic above provides us with clear information - our eyeballs naturally avoid places where ads appear.