Are we blind to banner ads?

Eddie Dane said:
BTW:

Subliminal advertising (one frame in a film showing a logo or suggestion) has been scientifically proven to be ineffective.

But the public thought it was scary, politicians acted and it is actually illegal in the US.
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Subliminal audio definitely works on my father. He is losing his hearing, and he frequently repeats things other people say at a volume just below the level that he can clearly hear, believing they are his own thoughts. This generally happens after a 10 to 30 second delay, so I suspect there is some subconscious processing of the almost-understood speech that somehow loses its association with the input.
 
I'm completely unaffected by banner ads. That's why doctors and car insurance companies hate me. Do you know the five banner ads you should never read? Try this one weird trick!
 
Hmm - I always use ad blockers.

My feeling is that social media is a better venue for adverts these days, but that depends on the target audience demographic.
 
Ad Blocker user.

When I researched using banner ads to sell an iPhone video game about 4 years ago, all of the developers I spoke with who tried it with said that they broke even with the ads. For example, if an ad cost them $50 a month they would almost universally make about that much in return.

Some websites kindly ask me to unblock their ads so that they can gain enough money to remain available to my use, but I never do.

I don't watch TV anymore. When I visit people who do it is amazing how annoying commercials are when you aren't used to hearing them. They are unbearable to me now.
 
I don't block ads, but I am pretty blind to them.

Advertisers financed my first career and I'm encouraged that Internet advertising is growing more sophisticated. That means there's a chance that content producers will again get paid for their work.

I don't think banner ads have influenced me. There are probably better formats for slipping advertising into articles. The art of advertising on the Net is still in its infancy. Dang, I wish big media companies had been ahead of the curve on this. IMO journalism suffered when ad revenue plummeted. Newspapers seemed to have no clue how to formulate a Web-based business plan.

ETA: And, re the OP: Do some research on innovative Web-based advertising. Other small businesses have probably worked out schemes to get more page views than a banner ad would.
 
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E. E. "Doc" Smith, in one of the early Lensmen novels, published in 1950, had the hero visit a planet where people used "the sense of perception" instead of what we use to see with. The Lensman is linked telepathically with his host as they drive from the space port to the capital city. As he "looks" around he notices he can see through everything except for some large opaque objects beside the road. When he asks about them the driver focuses on one and it say, paraphrased, "Eat Smiegsoy's Food!" The driver was mentally blocking the "billboards" out. Smith's point here, conscious or not, was that putting up billboards along the highway was futile as people simply filter them out of the landscape.

So, this issue goes back at least that far.
 

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I started using AdBlock after a poorly written Flash ad slowed my computer to a crawl every time it showed up. I even wrote to the company a few times telling them about the problem. It was Best Western, and they never responded. So AdBlock it is.
 
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Almo said:
I started using AdBlock after a poorly written Flash ad slowed my computer to a crawl every time it showed up. I even wrote to the company a few times telling them about the problem. It was Best Western, and they never responded. So AdBlock it is.
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None of them are well written, flash crashes every couple of hours and slows my browser down. It's so bad that Chrome has a task manager which I keep running now so I can kill the memory hog tabs.
 
I have clicked on ones that were unobtrusive and relevant: outdoors gear adverts at an outdoors website.

I did notice today the ISF banner advert was for fortune telling or something similar. I didn't click on that.
 
(shrug) I notice if it's a pretty girl. otherwise I do my best to tune them out. I will click on the X and tell Google I don;t want to see it again sometimes... I don't think i have ever clicked on one to visit the sponsoring site..
 
The Firefox browser has a neat little thing you can turn on and off to block popups. been using banner ad blocks for a while now.

Some particularly saavy web developers will purposely create bots that will click ad banners on their site, in order to drive up revenue. This will, obviously, cost money. And bots do not purchase anything. So you're only going to be spending money. Not spreading your name brand or driving sales.

Most people nowadays....even older people....know enough not to click ad banners. There are just way too much adware out there, that nobody trusts banners anymore. That, and it has been so saturated with ads, that people become virtually blind them anyway.
 
Nihilianth said:
The Firefox browser has a neat little thing you can turn on and off to block popups. been using banner ad blocks for a while now.

Some particularly saavy web developers will purposely create bots that will click ad banners on their site, in order to drive up revenue. This will, obviously, cost money. And bots do not purchase anything. So you're only going to be spending money. Not spreading your name brand or driving sales.

Most people nowadays....even older people....know enough not to click ad banners. There are just way too much adware out there, that nobody trusts banners anymore. That, and it has been so saturated with ads, that people become virtually blind them anyway.
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Well, the idea was to display the ads, like digital billboards. Not get clicks.

It's a bit of a side issue now.

I've been writing blog posts on several fashion related subjects. These are getting quite some traffic now. Seems the way to go.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Well, the idea was to display the ads, like digital billboards. Not get clicks.

It's a bit of a side issue now.

I've been writing blog posts on several fashion related subjects. These are getting quite some traffic now. Seems the way to go.
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Ah, like the old-school banner ads from the 90s and early 2000s. Usually people use Adsense, and they are click-driven these days. Yeah, I wouldn;t do ads. At all. Do social media. A blog is great, especially once you start getting people actually following you. (You may even get other people to pay YOU to display THEIR ads if you are able to get enough traffic to your site!) Use Facebook and Twitter. (I personally do not like Twitter, and see very little point in it. Trends move so quickly in Twitter, and your posts can quickly get buried.)

Now, the key to social media, especially blogging, is not to get too "sales-pitchy." You have to be interesting, and post relevant current events, and try not to come off as you trying to sell something every chance you get.

Fashion is your business, I take it?* Keep at it. Keep plugging away, but do not get too carried away. Too many posts, and people get bored and frustrated in trying to keep up. Too few posts, and people lose interest and think you disappeared. Usually one post every day or two is a good pace. For 5 or 10 posts you make about something in the fashion industry, I would maybe throw in a quickie about something you are trying to sell, and keep it a quickie.

*(I assume you have some product you are trying to sell.)*
 
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