1994 was when banner ads first appeared? I bet they looked freakin’ awful.
Anyway, things haven’t necessarily improved much these days. A primary reason for their failure was “Banner Blindness” – a symptom of the predictable placement (and bloody ugly design) of the banners, making people blur them from their vision and focus solely on the content.
Marketers soon figured this out and started being even more annoying by putting them in the middle of blog post content (interruption marketing sucks!) so you tripped over them during your reading. Or more likely – hit the back button because you found it offensive.
Anyway, rant over. The point of this post is to examine who is looking at – and more importantly clicking – your banners. I think the most interesting stats in the infographic below are the ones about why people don’t click on your banners – you could learn something from that section.
I’ve also included a bunch of tweetable stats from the graphic at the bottom of the post so you can sound all knowledgeable ‘n’ such. You’re welcome.
This is my favourite:
“People are more likely to survive a plane crash than click a banner ad”
[ tweet this ]
Oh and don’t forget that if you do manage to get a click on your banners that they should go to targeted landing pages to help you convert that valuable click into a customer.
Who Looks At Banner Ads Infographic
Got any interesting stats or case studies about your own banner campaigns? Share them in the comments, I’d love to know how you’re doing.
Wonderful facts and figures especially the last main ways they are used ..
Where is this data derived from? 2.1% Click-through-rate on banner ads? I have a hard time believing that…
Your Info-graphic is gone?
Yeah, just noticed – looking into it. It’s from another vendor.
thanks for letting us know.
I really enjoyed the figures (especially with the charts) on this article. There was one number, however, that raised an eyebrow. It said the average CTR for banner ads on the internet amounted to 2.1%. I think that’s quite high, considering Google released figures for the CTR across their content network, which amounted to .09%-.11% CTR. I think a 2.1% CTR for banner advertisements would be a great success, which certainly won’t amount to average. Your thoughts?
Not sure where the stats came from (graphic came from a 3rd party – but they do list their sources at the bottom of the graphic).
I found a direct link to the image at http://unbounce.com/photos/Social-Media-Infographics-Who-looks-at-banner-ads-via-unbounce.png
Yeah, we found a version and put it on our blog to prevent it disappearing – but still links out to the original source.
[...] But interest in a banner ad is an anomaly. With average click-through-rates hovering around 2.1% according to this infographic, while others suggesting even lower numbers of .04%. There’s clearly a problem to fix. [...]
I love the “Banner Blindness” theory. I will definitely pass that along to my clients. Thanks.