A recent study was conducted on web advertisements that produced some interesting results. My feeling on studies is that the results can be very skewed depending upon the size and target market (are these brand new surfers, established surfers, etc), but if we put that aside for a moment, this study does provide some interesting food for thought.

Media Daily:

Of those surveyed, 26 percent rated online banner ads “Very Positive or “Somewhat Positive,” while 61 percent were “Neutral.” For skyscrapers, 25.4 percent of respondents were very positive or somewhat positive, and 23.1 percent for pop-in between ads or interstitials. On the flip side, for intersitials, 56 percent of respondents were somewhat negative or very negative with regard to the format. On ads with audio, only 15.3 percent of respondents were very positive or somewhat positive, while 62.8 percent had negative associations. With regard to large rectangles or squares that sit in the corner or center of a Web page, consumers were overwhelmingly negative–62.4 percent. Only 26.4 percent of them were neutral toward the seemingly harmless rectangle.

So traditional advertising, that is blocked with programs like Norton Antispam is the least offensive, according to this study? This doesn’t spell good news for free websites that depend on this advertising revenue to offset the cost of producing the content. What about video, out of frame ads or those animations that move around the webpage?

Most notable, however, was the finding that 74.6 percent of respondents had negative associations with video ads, versus 14.1 percent who were neutral and 10 percent who were positive. Out-of-frame ads, or animations that scoot over and around the page, scored 4.7 percent positive, versus 84 percent negative.

I must admit a guilty pleasure with those ads of cars that speed across the website. The problem I see is this is a double-edged sword. If webmasters can’t make money through advertising, they are going to have to move more towards paid subscriptions. This will have an effect on the amount of free content on clean, “no offensive” type traditional advertising. As a webmaster who produces and distributes some free content and depends on advertiser revenue to support this, I’m likely going to have to rethink this distribution model. I’m not going to go into takeover the screen mode as some webmasters are going to do with their sites, but really, can they be blamed?

This Friday on Script School radio I’ll be talking with two attorneys on this subject as well as free speech on the web. The porn web business is not going to be the only sector affected by the blocking or removal of advertisements.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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