Digital Boomerang Singapore 

We just returned from Usability Week 2006 in Sydney, Australia.

If you haven’t yet heard the news, the Nielsen Norman Group has shown — quite definitely — in their research that web users don’t look at advertising. Eyetrack study after study showed that users barely ever glanced at display ads. In fact, they often deliberately ignore ads while going through a page.

Kara Coyne, Director of Research, likened the behaviour to navigating “an obstacle race”. Users saw ads as obstacles and skipped passed them to get to the content.

I am not sure if I am utterly convinced that usability tests can show the effectiveness of online advertising. All the users were given tasks to complete. If I was given one, I’d be rather focused on completing it. And some banner ads aren’t going to get in my way.

Would the results hold if we observed users who were leisurely surfing the web instead? Or are we assuming that most users go to the web to complete tasks?

Most days, I check in and out of websites for quick info. Yes, I ignore ads most of the time. But every now and then, when life is less hectic, I glance at ads that either entertain me or are relevant to me. Sometimes, I inevitably glance at ads because I’ve left my browser window open while talking on the phone or chatting with a colleague.

In one eyetrack study, the user was asked to find mortgage rates. A banner ad (300×250) screamed loudly “Lowest mortage rates” and yet the user didn’t give it the time of the day! Shocking? A big blow to online advertising?

Perhaps, it is just that we are all so trained not to look at advertising for answers. We don’t expect banner advertisements to answer our questions. We expect advertisements to distract us.

And expectation, according to the Nielsen Norman Group, is everything. That’s why users look for privacy policies, terms of use, contact information, etc. at the bottom of the page. Users categorically look for search boxes near the top. That’s what users have come to expect.

I’d take the ability of usability tests to demo the effectiveness of online advertising with a pinch of salt. For advertisers, the things that matter are recall, awareness, etc. The ability of the audience to remember an ad, or to have purchase decisions affected by it, are more useful measures. A recent survey by CCB suggests only one third of users are able to recall brands from online advertising.

What results can we expect if we tasked users with looking for answers in the print paper? Would users also skip the advertising pages? Would they deliberately navigate around display ads to find the answer? I believe so. That’s how we are conditioned to behave.

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