new style banner ads (usability perspective)

Have a look, too, at the Motley Fool's homepage. There's an internal ad re ISA investments that uses a 'scratchcard'-type technique. You scroll over it and it 'scratches' away to reveal the ad or notice below. Maybe I'm just simple, but I had great fun playing around - trying to spoof it. Bottom line is I noticed it - and even went off to e-consultancy to comment about it. More of this type of thing must surely be the way forward for online advertisers.

Sam

On 15:23:25 6 February 2001 damian wrote:
>Hey All
>
>I thought I'd draw your attention to a very clever new
>method of banner advertising introduced on the cnet.com
>site.
>
>Although from a usability perspective I feel it is my duty
>to talk about the power of visual attention, the
>intrusiveness of this medium, task-orientated behaviour...
>yada... yada, I wont! Well maybe a little. I know some of
>you were probably expecting me to say “oh my god - a
>flash ad, get rid of it”, but I have to admit that
>this is a great improvement upon the traditional 'click
>here and I'll take you to a completely different site and
>help you get completely lost' method. This new method is
>much closer to a 'hey look at this - have a look and then
>get back to what you were reading about’ approach.
>Although it is still intrusive and still draws users
>attention away from their original task, it doesn't have
>disastrous effects when the user wants to get back to
>their original task.
>
>Take a look :
>http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-
>4699393.html?tag=cd_mh
>
>Although this is a great improvement on standard banner
>ads we would point out a couple of things to consider:
>
>- what is being advertised should be relevant to the scope
>of the site – attempt to make the ad related to the
>user’s needs and the task they are performing at
>that time.
>
>- adverts like this should consider animation very
>carefully as this is predetermined to disrupt user’s
>attention. If a decision is made to go with animation,
>then we would suggest that the animation stops after a
>short while as users will notice it straight away. If they
>make a decision to ignore the ad, it would be better not
>to push the point. Similarly, once the advert has been
>explored any animation should cease.
>
>- important content such as navigation links, legal
>information and so on would be better placed away from the
>ad as people do suffer from banner blindness – a
>condition whereby users tend to assume that anything big,
>bold, animated, colourful etc. is an advert and attempt to
>focus on other areas of the screen. For example, in one
>study – only 23% of users recalled an advertisement,
>and only 17% recalled the ad and the company name, which
>leaves 60% of users who recalled nothing.
>
>
>- the ad should be placed nearer the bottom of the page or
>wherever the user is allowed to finish what he/she came to
>that page to do before being drawn into the ad/ This
>supports the view that they will be much more susceptible
>to the lure of more information when they have completed
>their task or at least completed a small part of the
>overall task.