I read an article by Jakob Nielsen on banner advertising that made me think about how advertising is being used on sites currently, and how it could be improved in the future.

The findings in his eyetracking research led to some age old, rather obvious findings. If site ads are made up of text, faces, or cleavage (a.k.a. anything sexy), people will look. But the greatest find was that when people are navigating through a site for content, they are on auto-ad-block. They don’t even see the banner ads or ads that are not built into the site to look like meaningful content. (Banner Blindness)

This leads me to, again, think about the need for useful and intelligent site advertising. I feel that no site page should ever have more than 3 ads on it. The ads need to follow the design of the page, not construct it. The problem I have is that there are a lot of sites that would fall apart, layout-wise, if the ads were removed. I understand a need to make money, but I strongly feel that if you have the viewers, advertisers will pay to get their ads in those viewers’ faces.

I also believe that you must keep advertisements low on a page that you want people to take seriously. If you want to be a credible source, make the content the main point of the page. Let the ads fall in toward the end of design, not starting the base of it. The last thing you want to happen is for someone to come to your site and not be able to see the most important content. It defeats the purpose of having the site.

Nielsen re-enforces this idea with a conversation about ethical advertising. People have caught on to people blocking out ads, but unfortunately the workaround has started to be “duping” the user into the advertisements. Making them look like content or masking them as something else entirely. Shame on them. This can only lead to fickle users that won’t stick around.

My philosophy on ads on pages is one of honesty and communication. You are entering into a relationship with the user, they want content and you want to give it to them. Users have come to expect ads, but have unobtrusive ones. Mark them as an advertisement (small text at the bottom of it, etc.), make the ads relevant to your site, and don’t overload the user with a bunch of them (3 max per page). This will give your users trust that they aren’t being fed anything they don’t want, it will give you credibility, and it can end up creating a long-lasting relationship, which is what every site wants…viewers that come back and spread the word of the site.