Eyetracking Shows Web Audience Ignores Ads

More evidence of the importance of ranking in the "natural" or "organic" results! We continually talk in class about how searchers ignore ads. Here is some hard evidence on the point.

In the study cited in this article, the focus was on banner ads, and with some discussion of "annoying" ads and how people respond to them. The posting shows the results of some eyetracking studies. These are tests that are done by having subjects open web pages, then having machines follow their eye movements to see what parts of the page they actually look at. In the three sharts shown, it is clear that people don't even look at the ads sections of the pages!

This is entirely consistent with my observations of my own experience when browsing the web. I can assure you that I could not even tell you what the ads on the page referred to in most cases. They are just not a part of my "scan pattern" on a page!

All studies that I have seen of searcher behavior have always reinforced this point. With this kind of information in hand, one wonders how paid ads ever contribute anything to the success of a site!

Optimizing your site properly so that the search engines present you in their unpaid listings is still the best investment of your marketing efforts! Not only will you get better results for your efforts, but the results don't stop when you stop paying for them!!