Member Avatar for MktgRob

While at InternetWeekNY last week it was said that banner advertising is a dead issue and that studies show more than 50% of the people who go on-line experience 'banner blindness'.

But today I am looking at the results of the Search Engine Marketing and Online Display Advertising Integration Study (even the acronym would be to long so from here on in I will refer to it as the study), and it show quite different data. In fact, the study shows that 52% of people actively respond to display advertising with 31% clicking directly on the ad. I will assume the other 21% respond to the ads in other ways. So, with a third of the internet users clicking on the ads, it is safe to say that the banner ad part of an internet marketing campaign is alive and well.

The study also showed that 27% of the people surveyed said that after seeing the ad (and possibly clickin on it) they also searched actively in the engines for more info. So a relationship does exist between SEM and the thought-to-be-dead display ads. Taking into consideration these results, and I urge all who are interested in this to seek out the study and check it out for yourselves, will you advise your clients or your company that they perhaps need to revise their overall internet marketing strategies?

  • 4 Contributors
  • 3 Replies
  • 102 Views
  • 2 Weeks Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by IdeaAlex

Dani AI

Generated

This thread frames two common extremes: one view that display is obsolete and another that treats raw click counts as proof it still works. Both miss the practical middle ground. Display can deliver impact when creative, placement, audience signals, and measurement are designed for the campaign objective (awareness, consideration, or direct response). Older metrics and buying patterns no longer map cleanly to business outcomes; the sensible response is to test rigorously and measure incrementality instead of relying on headline CTRs or single studies.

Practical measurement checklist to apply before changing strategy:

  • Define one primary KPI per campaign (brand lift, engaged visits, incremental conversions or LTV) and align reporting windows to the buyer journey.
  • Instrument at the user and event level (tagging, server-side events or clean event pipelines) so exposures can be linked to downstream behavior while respecting privacy consent.
  • Run controlled tests (randomized holdouts, geo splits or experiment groups) to measure incremental lift rather than attributing everything to last click.
  • Add viewability and third-party verification to remove non-viewable placements and monitor traffic quality signals (bounce rate, session depth, post-click conversion).

Creative, format, and channel mix matter. Emotional or contextually relevant creative often outperforms bland units, but test variants (static vs dynamic creative optimization, native vs banner) and sequence messaging across display and search. Use audience segmentation (recency, page depth, lookalikes) and frequency caps to reduce waste. Beware of inventory quality, ad fraud, and privacy-driven limits on identifiers; plan for first-party data and server-side measurement.

Remarks tied to this thread: is right to question single-study conclusions; validate with your own experiments. ’s measurement focus is essential — push beyond basic click-tracking. and point to creative and content formats; test those formats under the same measurement rig. Design a 60-day experiment plan, collect results, then scale what proves incremental.

Recommended Answers

All 3 Replies

Member Avatar for ChiefLee

Kind of whether your glass is half empty or half full. If half of the people of "banner blindness", that means that the other half don't.

Personally I'd approach purchasing banners cautiously. Make sure your system is able to actually track conversions from your advertising campaigns. If you can't track conversions, very difficult to know if it's money well spent.

Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

It depends on the banner and the message the banner ad is displaying. Some time, I saw a banner ad featuring a mean looking baby and I just had to click. It lead to an informational site featuring an array of mean looking babies and it was for whooping cough. The banner ad definitely got my attention. Thus, it did its job. If the banner ad is just a logo, most likely I will not click to it at all. Thus, the most effective banner activates an emotional response.

Member Avatar for IdeaAlex

My take on it.... It does depend on the product and its market. Some banners are engaging and they will drive clicks (quality of that traffic is another story thou). CPM will be dying, that's almost a fact.

I think what is underestimated is a product placement (with integrity). Quality advertorials that presell advertisers' product can go a long way if you have tools to support the process. The audience wants quality, fact based content, education and entertainment. Advertisers want measurable performance.
If you can give it all, you are a king :-) (or a queen... but now it might offend someone ;-) )

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.