What does banner blindness actually mean?

Banner blindness refers to the phenomenon in which visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore the advertising banners placed there, which is due to an increased resistance to conventional banner advertising.

The beginnings of banner advertising on the Internet

The origins of banner advertising date back to 1994, when the first banner ad went online. At that time, banner advertising was considered extremely lucrative and achieved high click-through rates.
Although advertising banners used to be considered successful due to their eye-catching design, they are now less effective with users due to banner blindness. The rapidly increasing sensory overload on the Internet and changing user habits have led to a decrease in attention for advertising banners.

Changing user behavior and the emergence of banner blindness

Today’s Internet use is characterized by the motto of getting to your destination as quickly and easily as possible. In most cases, advertising banners do not lead to the desired goal, which is why users tend to ignore or hide them. Banner blindness is not limited to advertising banners. In the majority of cases, the user decides completely unconsciously which elements are perceived and which are not. Advertisers and web developers are faced with the challenge of finding a solution to this problem.

Strategies for overcoming banner blindness

For a long time, advertising banners were placed in the header and page areas of websites. As a consequence of this, the user has developed a kind of “tunnel vision” in addition to banner blindness – the areas just mentioned receive significantly less attention than other positions.
One way to circumvent banner blindness is so-called native advertising. Here, the advertising is so cleverly integrated into the context of the website that it is hardly perceived as such. However, the prerequisite for this is that the advertising fits in thematically with the rest of the content.