Advertising has become so numerous that it is often ignored. Marketers are finding it increasingly difficult to compete for the attention of potential customers and overcome so-called banner blindness. Users are becoming less receptive to ads. It negatively affects the ROI of advertisers.
In this article we explore what banner blindness is and how to overcome it with the help of in-app promotion.
According to a study by Infolinks, 86% of internet users suffer from banner blindness. Since 1998, this is a psychological phenomenon where users consciously or unconsciously ignore banners on websites.
The brain literally ‘filters out’ visual noise to focus on more important information. And while web page templates and ad types have evolved, banner blindness is still prevalent, according to a Nielsen Norman Group study.
There are trajectories that a user’s gaze typically follows:
People focus on information that is related to their goals. This behaviour is a consequence of the limited capacity of human attention.
In order to avoid overload and efficiently perform tasks, users have learnt to highlight useful elements, such as navigation bars, search boxes, headings, and ignore useless ones.
This is how banner blindness was formed, which hinders the promotion of products and services. Brands get fewer clicks and sales.
For the user, this means they may miss out on hot offers, promotions or products that could be useful.
Despite banner blindness reducing the performance of ad campaigns, brands’ promotional spending is only increasing. This is because there are effective tools to attract users’ attention and combat ad swiping.
Banner blindness is a common problem when users don’t notice standard ad formats. In-app promotion, i.e. advertising inside mobile applications, helps to effectively circumvent this limitation.
The key tools for overcoming banner blindness are creatives and targeting.
Unlike static banners on desktop, in-app advertising is more interactive and user-centric.
It includes:
Interactive banners show high user engagement rates. Creative formats allow you to show more information, to interest potential customers through interaction with content.
The possibilities of mechanics are almost limitless.
For example, you can add a ‘wipe’ effect to banners: the user removes elements from the screen to get information. The ‘countdown’ mechanic calls for a targeted action before a set time has elapsed.
Rich media are animated banners with interactivity. They allow you to add animations, graphics and interaction elements to engage users.
At in-app campaigns, they appear on top of content and stay on the screen until the user clicks on a special button.
Varieties:
According to Google, rich media increases engagement by 75% over standard ads. This is an important tool for companies looking to break through banner blindness.
In addition to rich media, there are other interactive formats:
Targeting uses available data about users to find the target audience. Competent setting of parameters allows you to achieve a high conversion rate from the campaign.
The main goal is to ensure that the banner reaches only those who are interested in the proposed product or service. For this purpose, targeting segments the audience by a number of characteristics: gender, age, interests, geography, online behaviour.
This helps to minimise advertising blindness and optimise promotion costs.
According to the Digital 2025 report, in-app advertising is considered one of the largest segments of digital advertising. It has established itself as an effective tool for engaging with new audiences and attracting new customers.
We have been helping brands solve their image challenges with mobile app advertising for over 10 years. During this time, we have implemented thousands of successful advertising campaigns.
If you would like to learn more about the BYYD platform cases, we invite you to read the examples of mobile promotion on our website.
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