Here’s something interesting.
If you see the same ad enough, so much so, that you see it regularly, do you notice it more or less?
You notice it, perhaps less or the same, depending on the ad, and you generally ignore it.
It’s called Ad blindness. And it affects many people. Those who see the same ad regularly are particularly affected, because they are not likely to inspect the ad deeper, and infact, more likely to simply ignore it exists.
Those of us who use the net frequently do tend to expect to find things in certain places, for example, navigation on the left or top, content in a clear section in the middle of the page (generally the larger section), and obviously ads on MOST sites on the right hand side. Take a look at the awful website at demonoid.com.. See my point?
Anyone remember the ‘fart’ button? Who were they trying to kid? I never clicked it. Seemed rather useless (and I knew it was an ad).. But did anyone ever discover the marketing behind it?
It was running for ages, so there’s obviously some people out there that have nothing better to do, clicking a ‘fart’ button..
That’s my point. Advertising blindness, those of us who are frequent surfers know the ads from the content, and can quickly skim the ads for the content, finding the information we require much sooner.
This obviously has a negative affect on the advertising industry, as more and more users become blind to ads, so the next trick is to try and make them interactive and entertaining, like, out drink, or out fight Paris Hilton for example.
If you develop, you’ll know a lot of programming is entirely based on interactions, or events, an event triggers something, everything that happens is triggered by something. Thus, bashing Paris Hilton multiple times might be entertaining, but sure enough, the company behind it wants you to buy a ring tone for example, and POP, up comes the popup as you win at the fight of Paris vs. Britney (example – tho, that might explain her sudden hair loss)…
I’m curious how many people actually do notice and pay attention to advertisements. Can’t seriously be many users out there ignoring ads on a whole, and of course kids will click anything, even if they are told.. NOT TO CLICK HERE.
Entertainment value for some I guess.