What is banner blindness?

Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information. It is a behaviour that is particularly prevalent amongst experienced users who, after being exposed to visually attention grabbing, but ultimately irrelevant content, become desensitised and ignore it.

The constant flow of new users, not yet immune, maintains the effectiveness of classic formats and enables the traditional market to continue operating, but growing blindness is a phenomenon that has led to innovation in advertising: some advertisers have invested in graphically novel formats, that are elaborate and attention grabbing, which in the long time also have less and less impact, whilst others have adopted alternative formats that pass undetected amongst page contents, softening any design or location attributes that may give away their commercial nature at first glance. The current effectiveness of text advertisements resides precisely in their ability to mimic the appearance of search engine results and their contextual relevance.

Other denominations:
Banner blindness

 
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