Consumers are relatively accepting to banner advertising on the Internet. Research indicates that they realize that in most cases banners subsidize or fully pay for the cost of the websites that they visit.INTECO found that 53 percent of Internet users in the US in 1988believe that online advertising is necessary to keep the content of websites free. 43 percent said that they found banners less obtrusive than direct marketing and TV advertising. 23 percent did not find them less obtrusive. 22 percent said they would definitely pay more to subscribe to ad-free sites while 37 percent said they definitely would not.MBinteractive found in their research for HotWired and Ogilvy & Mather that Web users support advertising on the Web. In their research for the Internet Advertising Bureau they went one step further and found that not only do web users tolerate advertising but some actually enjoy it!
When asked to rate their feelings to Web advertising on a 5 point scale ranging from “I hate it” to “its great”, more than half their respondents to the survey reported a top-two box score.The research by MBinteractive was conducted in 1997. At the time, the market was less flooded with banners and Internet users were less sophisticated in their browsing habits. More users clicked on banners as a way of finding new sites. Today many know where to find these sites and realize that clicking on a banner often brings them off on a tangent which adversely affects the time it takes to complete the task at hand. This may help explain the dramatic fall in click through rates over the last year.Many Internet users now suffer from a condition called Attention Deficit Disorder. This is a term used to describe the decreasing attention spans and enhancement of filtering mechanisms by consumers who are exposed to higher volumes of input that they can process of act upon.The average user is now exposed to over 100 banner advertisements during a 30 minute Internet session.
They have less time to contemplate or process the banner advertisements they are subjected to. Advertisements that are not perceived to be of interest, relevance or value to the consumer are quickly forgotten. Forrester Research found that two thirds of a selected group of users could not remember the contents of the last banner ad they had seen.Banner advertising is generally accepted and sometimes even liked if the banner provides the target market with access to the products and information that they are looking for. However, if the presence of banners adversely affect their browsing experience, for example, too many banners cluttered on a page resulting in slowing down the time it takes for the page to be viewed, Internet users will become dissatisfied with the publisher and maybe even the advertiser. Internet users suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder, to successfully execute a banner campaign the banners must highly targeted, relevant, memorable and outstanding for the target market.