Interesting numbers I have not seen before. I suspect that there is still value to banner ads as we as consumers influenced by all forms of marketing more then we realize.

This is a survey, it depends solely on what people say, not what they do, and as we all know, discrepancy between the results of these (almost) always exists. I don’t know what the testing environment was, but I doubt that they managed to prevent bias and isolate ego, rationalization and other factors that might lead to false statistics (people like to say that they’re immune to advertising, not easily influenced and manipulated… it makes them feel more powerful and autonomous).

Also, I don’t know how precisely was that term of “ignoring” ads defined for them. I think that some of them might have interpreted it as “not paying conscious attention to ads”, and some might have interpreted it as “noticing banners but not clicking on them”. And even if they say that they ignore them, it’s still somewhat misleading, as they have been presented — from what can be deduced from above — only with 2 options, none of which allows the possibility of not ignoring a certain % of ads, or any other intermediate value, it’s just “I ignore all the ads” VS “I never ignore any ads”.

I believe that the only way to get the accurate data would be to test how they behave and what they do, not what they say (maybe eye-tracking & fMRI+EEG).

I might have misinterpreted something above, though, I always leave that as a possibility.

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Do you really expect survey respondents to say they LIKE and WATCH and WANT TO SEE advertisements? I would never expect an honest answer to that question. This survey asked the wrong question in the wrong way.

I’d really like to know the click-rates of contextual in-text links. They don’t look as obvious. I tend to click them more than banner ads. At the very least I roll my cursor over them to see where they go first.

Thanks for the info. I think it would be more interesting to do the study without including advertisers and ad publishers. I believe people involved in advertising would be far more likely to look at ads.
I also would like to see the breakdown between websites that are information based, and those that are primarily commercial.
You can say whatever you want by manipulating surveys and numbers.

I use proxy software on my network to block ads. By blocking ads we saved over 1.3Gb of data a month between the 6 of us that use the web at our flat!

The text ad comment is taken out of context though – when I am looking to purchase something, you bet I will be looking at the text ads because I know those are people reaching out for my business. I’m looking for the best message that attracts me.

If I am researching and want to learn more about the product that I’m going to buy, most often in bigger ticket items, then I won’t look at text ads at all because I’m looking for information.

Ask me if I know what banners have shown on my hotmail account on the right side – I have seen and acknowledged them all. Do I ignore them? No. You mean to ask, do I not click on them? I have not clicked on the vast majority of them. Is their message in my head? Yep. Marketing goal accomplished.

For the question “Do you ignore internet banner ads?” and post these kind of numbers is irrelevant out of context. What is ignoring? When are you ignoring them? Why are you ignoring them? Are you ignoring the banner ads on your hotmail or yahoo email page? Do you ignore the many many blocks of ads on the right side of news sites? Do you remember the ad message that was displayed to you? Do you remember it immediately after? One hour after? One day after?

This study could have much better information if there were a couple more of these specific questions.

Oh, and to throw one more in there for fun – I ignore 99% of TV commercials. And I don’t know anyone without a DVR. “Only 14% ignore TV ads.” What kind of crazy study was this?