As interest in the Internet as an advertising medium has grown, significant energy has been expended on uncovering the impacts that ad format, ad creative, and ad targeting have on key branding and direct response metrics such as Brand Awareness and CTR. As a result, it is now widely understood that optimizing these three campaign elements is integral to optimizing the performance of any Internet-based branding or direct response campaign.
Yet, while the Internet Advertising industry has recognized ad format, creative, and targeting as being critical factors impacting advertising effectiveness, it has largely failed to recognize the depth of impact that Web site design has on advertising effectiveness.
How many ads should be displayed per Web page? Should skyscraper ads be positioned to the right side of the page (as they most commonly are) or to the left? Should square ad units be “embedded” in editorial content or not? How many distinct page elements (colors, navigational elements, etc.) should be used in the design of an ad-supported web site? Should 468 x 60 banners be displayed above or below a web site’s main navigation bar?
These and related factors are rarely given consideration by either advertisers or ad-supported content publishers. Yet, there is clear, growing evidence that such factors substantially drive the bottom-line branding and direct response performance of Internet Advertising campaigns.
Just as ad format, ad targeting, and ad creative before it, what we see is that web site design is mistakenly approached by both advertisers and publishers as a matter of “art” rather than “science”.
As Leslie Laredo, founder of Internet Advertising consulting firm Laredo Group told Media Life magazine in a recent interview, “Very few designers really think about or understand the ad proposition before they design the sites. Designers are coming up with designs for sites that might work on one level but don’t work in terms of revenue production. The art of site design is not [yet] a science of site design.”
A “scientific” approach to the design of ad-supported Web sites, and the use of site design as a media buying criterion is, in all probability, still at least two to three years from being mainstream. Admittedly, the reason for this is not simply shortsightedness: Research and data on the subject is still largely lacking, and will take time to produce.
Nonetheless, important research does exist, and smart advertisers and publishers must seek to comprehend this research sooner rather than later.
In short, we believe, advertisers now can and must attempt to use an assessment of a site’s design as a factor in assigning value to that site as a piece of advertising real estate. At the same time, ad-supported content publishers must strive to determine means of content presentation that satisfy their content presentation objectives while maximizing advertiser ROI.
The facts: How Web site design impacts advertising effectiveness
According to research recently released by MSN, between 7% and 12% of the total time Internet users spend on Web pages is spent viewing ads. Yet, strikingly, according to MSN’s research, only two of the four factors that determine how much time users devote to looking at ads on a given page - ad format and ad creative quality - are considered by the typical advertiser in formulating their campaign strategy, and in conducting media buys. The other two determining factors, rarely considered, are Web site design factors: page layout and the placement of ads on the page.
MSN’s research in this instance was powered by usability company, Eyetracking, Inc., which uses patented technology to track the movement of users’ eyes as they move across the page.
In a recent interview with avant|marketer, Eyetracking Inc. Senior Usability Manager, Sylvia Knust explained that a strong correlation between the amount of time that a user spends viewing ads and the user’s ability to recall the various characteristics of those ads (which is directly related to their branding impact) has been consistently observed across multiple research studies conducted by Eyetracking Inc.
In 2001, both Terra Lycos, and C|Net separately retained Eyetracking, Inc. to assist in comprehensive redesigns of their respective Web sites. The main objective of the redesigns was to improve the effectiveness of the advertising being served via these sites. In specific, Eyetracking Inc. technology was deployed to enable each publisher to ascertain precisely how to re-configure the layout of its site so as to maximize the amount of time users spend viewing the ads placed on them (thereby optimizing the branding impact of those ads).
The Eyetracking, Inc.-backed Lycos site re-design, yielded powerful results. By re-configuring the design of the site such that the top placement 468 x 60 standard banner appears below, as opposed to above the main navigation bar of the site (which runs horizontally across the top of the page), Lycos increased the number of users that viewed their 468 x 60 top placement banner by 200% (thereby, effectively tripling the reach of this placement across their site), while simultaneously increasing the amount of time users spend viewing each of these ads, by 600%.
Brian Payea, a Terra Lycos spokesperson close to the Lycos site redesign, tells avant|marketer that the redesign has created significant, tangible ad performance improvements, pushing the CTR of the top placement 468 x 60 banner to levels that match the performance of the much larger skyscraper units. These results defy conventional wisdom on the relationship between ad unit size and ad effectiveness. The implication is clear: Web site design is a critical determining factor in the effectiveness of Internet Advertising.
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