Exploring consumer behaviour on digital space related to ad fatigue and banner blindness

Abstract

Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information, which can also be called ad blindness or banner noise. (Wikipedia, 2020) Banner blindness takes place due to various reason which can be listed as: • Inattention Blindness: Most of the times the user is not paying attention to a stimulus which leads to the thing getting unnoticed. This is known as inattention blindness. • Display Configuration: Banner blindness caused by the specific location of the banner on the webpage comes under this reason for blindness. • Task Type: Users doing a complex task, are engrossed in their activity and they are most likely to overlook the banner. This is known as a “state of interrupt ability.” (Marc Resnick, 2014) • Page Familiarity and Visual Appeal: A viewer gets habituated with the webpage he/she is visiting daily. Therefore, they are familiar and know how to navigate the page. This also leads to neglecting the banner on the webpage. Banner Blindness is also closely complemented by a phenomenon called “Ad fatigue”. This happens when the bombardment of the same advertisement renders it useless in the eyes of a viewer. This is mostly faced by users of free game and music applications on handheld devices and leads to the advertisement being completely neglected.