Internet Advertising: Is Anybody Watching

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Internet Advertising Is Anybody Watching

• Presented by
• Chris Njunge
• Maksim Feofanov

2
Issue

• Click-through rates (Main measure of internet
  advertising effectiveness) declining
• 7 in 1996, 0.7 in 2002 (DoubleClick, 2003)
• Companies curbed spending on internet advertising

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Key Questions

• Why do banner Ads seem to be ineffective?
• What can advertisers do to improve their
  effectiveness?

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Two Studies

• Eye-Tracking study to investigate online surfers
  attention to online advertising
• Large scale survey of users recall, recognition,
  and awareness of banner advertising

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Eye Tracking Study

• Internet different from other media because
  bandwidth is shared during ad
• H1 Internet users avoid looking at banner ads
• H2 The more time users have spent on the
  internet, the less they pay attention to banner
  ads

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Study Design

• 49 Respondents off street paid 15 euros
• Cover study- ergonomic research on the design of
  French portal (Voila)
• View 8 pages in trying to answer questions
• Each page with banner but no reference made to it

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Data Collection

• Eye tracking device
• Written survey after the task, about their
  internet savvy, the experimental process and
  their preferences and some questions regarding
  the banners they saw

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Analysis

• Every subject looked at one or more banner ad
• Average of 3.96 banners viewed
• Probability of 49- ( T.V. 90, 89-93 Yellow
  Pages, per Lohse, 1997)
• Screen was divided into zones depicting
  location, shape and content
• Logit Regression for Zone Attractiveness

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Results

• Half of banner exposures not attended to
• Surfers purposely avoid looking at banners
• Surfers processing banner ads at pre attentive
  level
• Experts more efficient at processing web pages
• Younger surfers more efficient than older

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Findings

• Location, size, and zone content are important
  factors when trying to predict whether a zone is
  attended

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Study 2 Impact of Online Advertising

• H3 Advertising effectiveness increases with the
  frequency of exposure
• H4A Larger banner ads will be more effective
  than smaller banner ads
• H4B Banner ads that are laid out vertically will
  be more efficient than banner ads laid out
  horizontally

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Study 2 Impact of Online Advertising

• H5A Banner ads that contrast with their
  environment will be more effective than ads that
  do not
• H5B Animated banners will be more effective than
  static ones
• H5C The effectiveness of a banner ad depends on
  its message

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Study Design

• Two part self administered questionnaire sent to
  6000 people
• First questions on current internet usage and
  brand awareness
• 9 Web pages with specific task or question to
  answer
• 7 of 9 pages contained banner ads relating to 5
  different products
• 18 different banners used balanced out

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Study Design

• 24hrs after first survey and 9 web pages, follow
  up survey sent
• Questions about advertising recall and for rating
  of banner ads seen
• 807 respondents filled out second survey (13.5
  response rate)

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Analysis
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Analysis

• Banner Advertising has long term impact beyond
  immediate click through
• Effect of repetition tested across all five
  advertisers
• Repetition improves unaided advertising recall,
  brand recall, and brand awareness but does not
  improve aided advertising recall

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Results

• H4A Banner Size
• Small banner ads perform just as well as larger
  banner ads. Contradicts 1st study
• H4B Banner Orientation
• Banner orientation affects aided advertising
  recall but not unaided recall or brand recall

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Results

• H5A-C Graphical content
• Weak effect for contrast, but more contrasting
  performed worse ??
• No effect for animation
• Message affects recognition and comprehension
• The message is more important than how the
  message is sent

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Conclusion

• Surfers fixate on 50 of banners, process banners
  subconsciously
• Awareness is more important than click through
  rate
• What is said and how often its said is more
  important than how it is said
• Bigger animated ads will not compensate for
  ineffective content

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Shortcomings

• Searches were goal-directed as opposed to
  exploratory which is equally common but vastly
  different
• Memory measures and not behavioral measures were
  examined

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Questions