AJ Kohn originally shared:
The Hidden Cost of Annoying Ads
The study began with a set-up experiment that showed people real online ads and asked them to rate them on a scale based on how annoying (or not) they were. Factors such as animation in the ad, and bad aesthetics, were common reasons for a bad rating. Once that was established, the researchers studied the impact of the annoying ones on a group of people paid to carry out the e-mail categorization task, versus two other groups doing the same, who were shown non-annoying ads or no ads at all.
People doing the task looked at one e-mail per page, and each page had two banner ads on either side – either two annoying ones, or two that were not annoying – or just white space in the margins.
The researchers experimented with different levels of pay per e-mail the participants reviewed; unsurprisingly, people who were paid more looked at more pages. But in every case, people shown annoying ads looked at fewer pages than people in the same pay scale who were shown non-annoying or no ads.
The math tells a troubling tale: Looking at the behaviours across pay scales, people in this experiment who saw bad ads had to be paid .115 cents more per page to match the level of work done by someone shown good ads, and .135 cents more to match the level of someone shown no ads at all.
Very interesting research here that shows that the short-term gains in CTR on `annoying` ads have a long-term cost in terms of reduced views (and potentially CTR). It would be interesting, though, to see how quickly this bias dissipated. Because it clearly does. So what period of time has to pass before a user exposed to annoying ads is willing to return?
#advertising ?
The hidden cost of annoying ads is fewer page views
The Globe and Mail
Publishers and other website owners risk losing traffic as study shows people less inclined to carry on clicking in the face of obnoxious come-ons
The hidden cost of annoying ads is fewer page views
