Banner blindness

Today I came across an relatively old study (2007) but stil very relevant. It shows why Search Engine Marketing is not too effective and click through ratios are usually very low.

The most prominent result from the new eyetracking studies is not actually new. We simply confirmed for the umpteenth time that banner blindness is real. Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad. (Indeed, banner blindness is moving beyond the online realm, for example into ballot design.)

On hundreds of pages, users didn't fixate on ads. The following heatmaps show three examples that cover a range of user engagement with the content: quick scanning, partial reading, and thorough reading. Scanning is more common than reading, but users will sometimes dig into an article if they really care about it.



Heatmaps from eyetracking studies: The areas where users looked the most are colored red; the yellow areas indicate fewer views, followed by the least-viewed blue areas. Gray areas didn't attract any fixations. Green boxes were drawn on top of the images after the study to highlight the advertisements.

The following video clips show a gaze replay of one user's eye movements while looking for advice on how to invest for retirement. (The moving blue dot shows where the user is looking.) The page contains an ad for retirement accounts at Fidelity Investments, a site that offers good advice on the target topic and might therefore help users who click the ad.

Video advertising-fixation-gaze-replay  (.wmv)
Regular-speed gaze replay (19-second video, Windows Media format, 0.6 MB)

Video advertising-fixation-slowmotion (.wmv)
•Slow-motion gaze replay (1-minute video, Windows Media format, 2.2 MB)

As the replay shows, the user did fixate once within the ad, but at that moment, the ad is obscured by a pull-down menu. In reality, the user couldn't see the message; the fixation was clearly a mistake that occurred while she was trying to reacquire the menu after briefly looking away from the screen. All of this occurs so quickly that you probably need to review the slow-motion replay to follow the action. (This is typical for eyetracking: the eye moves so fast that our best insights come from watching slow-motion replays.)

Smart advertisers should therefore be looking at other ways to engage the consumer.

Original post: Banner Blindness old and new findings

BannerBlindness.pdf

A new target group "Online mums"

As the internet becomes more a standard household facility like a telephone or a washing machine mothers can be reached online. This nice infographic gives some details of how mothers in the UK spend their time on line. 

Organising crowdsourcing: What motivates online volunteers ?

Companies increasingly outsource activities to volunteers that they approach via an open call on the internet. The phenomenon is called ‘crowdsourcing’. In general rewards are absent, in some cases the best contributions are rewarded by means of recognition on the website or by monetary prizes. To make effective use of crowdsourcing, it is important to understand what motivates these online volunteers and what is the influence of rewards.

Irma Borst from the Erasmus University of Rotterdam has investigated in her phd thesis the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of volunteers on the decision to contribute and on the quantity, usefulness and novelty of contributions that these online volunteers provide. Three crowdsourcing communities were investigated http://www.tweakers.net/, http://www.nufoto.nl/, http://www.greenchallenge.info/

A crowdsourcing classification is proposed in which crowdsourcing initiatives are classified on the basis of their reward systems:
A) Gift sourcing (no or small financial rewards);
B) Expert sourcing (large financial rewards)
C) Game Sourcing (extreme money rewards).

The proposed classification of rewards systems will help organizers of online communities to set up effective reward systems.

Phd thesis Irma Borst

Generations online 2010 (USA)

An interesting research shows that certain key internet activities are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These include:

• Email
• Search engine use
• Seeking health information
• Getting news
• Buying products
• Making travel reservations or purchases
• Doing online banking
• Looking for religious information
• Rating products, services, or people
• Making online charitable donations
• Downloading podcasts

The use of internet is becoming just as standard as for example using a telephone.  The info graphic below shows nicely how internet activities are divided among the generations.

  

Source: The report on internet use across generations

Ten Words That Build Trust

Although this finding depends very much on which culture you come from, it still makes an interesting read. Would there be a possible quick fix by just adding a few strategic sentences at the end of a direct mail letter?

 Do you think one short sentence at the end of your ad could cause a major increase in the level of trust customers place in you? Believe it or not, it’s true. Researchers found that placing the following statement at the end of an ad for a auto service firm caused their trust scores to jump as much as 33%!

“You can trust us to do the job for you.”

Seems simple, eh? Almost something that doesn’t even need to be said, since the implication in any ad or relationship is that if you give the firm a job to do, they will do it. There’s no claim of doing it right, doing it better, doing it quickly, or even doing it with a smile.

Nevertheless, that phrase caused people to rate the firm in the ad higher in every category:

Fair Price – Up 7%
Caring – Up 11%
Fair Treatment – Up 20%
Quality – Up 30%
Competency – Up 33%

It’s quite surprising that as nebulous as the “trust us” statement was, it produced major increases in very specific areas of performance.
So, if you want your customers to trust you, remind them that they CAN trust you. Try it. It will work. You can trust me.

Image via Shutterstock. Original study: On the Potential for Advertising to Facilitate Trust in the Advertised Brand by Fuan Li and Paul W. Miniard. http://mesharpe.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,8,12;journal,16,31;linkingpublicationresults,1:110658,1 Summarized data can be found in About Face by Dan Hill.

Source:
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/ten-words.htm

Facebook Revenue Is Not Growing Like Google's Did

Facebook is on track to generate $2 billion in sales this year, a nice milestone for the social networking king.
In part because of this news, investors are piling into Facebook stock on the private markets at a $56 billion valuation. The assumption is that Facebook is the next Google, a money printing machine that might eventually even be BIGGER than Google.
While it's possible that scenario will play out, it's worth looking at how Facebook's revenue growth compares to other online-advertising-driven companies, such as Google and Yahoo.
It's true that Facebook did not emphasize revenue early in its early years, but neither did Google.
And as you can see below, when Google did put the pedal down, its revenue grew much more rapidly than Facebook's.
So those who are counting on Facebook becoming a bigger business than Google had better hope it has another ace up its sleeve.

Google vs facebook vs yahoo revenue growth


Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-google-facebook-yahoo-revenue-2010-12#ixzz18mJKp1o6