Usability guru Jakon Nielsen wrote a report in mid-August about banner blindness. You might I've seen it at the time, but I missed it until now so thought it was worth flagging up.

The findings aren't new - the fact that the phrase "banner blindness" is well known already demonstrates the awareness that the phenomenon occurs - but they are worth reading to re-familarise yourself with the conclusions.

The conclusions include:

• Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites.
• Plain text, faces and other body shot photos attract eyeballs
• Unethical advertising works - ads disguised as content and ads made to look like dialogue boxes.

Personally I don't use banners with the expectation they'll get me many clicks, but I it does sometimes add to a pages visual appeal to have brands and attractive artwork represented in banners etc.

Jakob Nielsen: Banner Blindness

Labels: advertising

Cast your eyes round the blogosphere and people generally love Text-Link-Ads.com. It's an easy way for an advertiser to get their text link placed on some pretty decent sites, and it's a pretty easy way for site owners to add a new revenue stream to their sites.

I was thinking about adding some text link ads to his website so added it on to their inventory system. Then you need to add some code to your site to make the adverts appear, should an advertiser pick your site. They have a selection of web technologies from to generate the right code for your website, including ASP, ASP.net, PHP, Coldfusion, Wordpress, Blogger and more.

To use a Blogger blog, you need to be on the new Blogger system that was recently phased in. But in addition to that, you can't be using a heavily customised template because you lose the ability in Blogger to add Blogger widgets like the RSS widget, which is needed for the Text-Link-Ads.com system to work.

So in my case, it's a lot more difficult to become a publisher. There may be some workarounds but they involve a bit of messing about and maybe getting the web host to treat .html files as .php files.

It seems to me that the one option missing from TLA's list of web technologies is good old hand coded HTML

I update my site frequently so would have no trouble putting ads up within a reasonable Service Level Agreement timescale, and presumably some kind of bots could be used to automatically detect that the link was in place.

If there was option for me as a publisher to place the adverts by hand on my site, then that's whole load of extra site owners that could take part and add revenue to their sites.

[EDIT]

Ok, it turned out there an option in my hosting control panel to very easily treat .htm files as .php files and therefore implement the Text Link Ads system. I still think think there's an argument for allowing links to be added by hand though.

Labels: advertising, text link ads

I had a little rant a while ago about the FSA's advertising campaign that directed listeners to search for some keywords and find their PPC ad rather than issue a URL at the end of the ad. As it happens, I've since heard the same ad but with different ending using the URL instead. Now, the FSA isn't funded by the tax payer so if they want to urinate their budget up the wall, than good luck to them.

This week I heard another advert on the radio, which had the same ridiculous advice. This time it was to do with CO2 emissions from cars, and is part of a campaign from the Department For Transport. Instead of giving the website address for more information, it ended with "search online for 'act on CO2'".

I've checked, and the PPC adverts are in place which take you to the relevant government website.

This is a pointless and unjustifiable waste of public money, thrown away in a misguided advertising campaign that could have been saved by simply stating the website address and not the direction to 'search online'.

Labels: advertising