Conventional wisdom suggests that a prominently placed ad would be more effective than one that is more obscure, but online that is often not the case. People have quickly learned to ignore things on a web page that are not content related.

First ignored was the banner ad placed at the very top of the page. To combat this these ads are often now placed under a page’s header and navigation to integrate them (as much as possible) into the actual content. In fact, studies have shown ads placed even further down the page have shown increased effectiveness.

Banner ad under page navigation

Ads placed alone the sides of web pages have also become easily ignored. Designers have tried using different shapes, sizes and styles to maximize the clickthroughs, but these visual techniques still leave much to be desired. People still focus on content – specifically text. To test this, we designed two homepages for a client. The latter replaced image callouts with text. It did little to affect clickthroughs.

Image-based callouts

Text replacements

 According to Google and other online media companies interstitial ads perform better and ads that blend in with content are best. Many online media suppliers allow you to match the style of ads that appear on your site to your design – at least font styles and colors.

Interstitial ad placement

Some sites have taken integration of ads even further and the results have been promising. If you can fool the visitor into perceiving the ad is content, or content related, it becomes more credible and clickthroughs increase.

Find the ad

Evolution is the key here and effectiveness is short lived. People adjust to what they’re seeing. To make your web ads more effective, think integration. It’s similar to the logic of subtle product placement in TV shows compared to the interruptive (and often ignored) nature of the 30 second commercial.