The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from The Advertising Research Foundation

Pay Attention to Online Advertising Clutter

A survey by Burst! (2002) found that web users generally accept advertising on a web page. However, their findings also show that for a large majority (63%) there is low tolerance for more than two units; one-third of web users said they could tolerate a single advertisement per web page, and another 30% of respondents said they could tolerate two ads per page.

More than one in three (36%) respondents said they would immediately leave a site if it appeared cluttered with advertising. This finding is nearly identical for men and women, and for all income segments analyzed. Teens (13–17) are more likely than other age segments to abandon a site perceived as cluttered.

Message effectiveness on a cluttered site will deteriorate. Nearly 70% of respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered said they pay less attention to the ads. One of the most resounding findings from this survey, however, is the negative impact advertising clutter can have on consumers’ perception of advertisers’ products and services. It found that 58% of respondents said they had a less favorable opinion of an advertiser’s product or service when it appeared in advertising on a web page they perceived as cluttered.

Eye-tracking research adds further support for a less cluttered page. Research firm MarketingSherpa’s eye-tracking study on retail suggests that attention to an individual ad is higher when there are fewer ads on the page, and lower when there ...