Ad spend on digital media eclipsing the ad spend on television for the first time in the UK in 2008.
If Facebook were a country, it would be the eighth most populated in the world, just ahead of Japan, Russia, and Nigeria.
— Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing that it has hit the milestone of 150 million active users.
I stumbled over this article today doing research for a client: (I have BOLDED the juicy bits - read the full article here)
Jacob Jakob Nielsen knows web users. The Nielsen/Norman Group, which he co-founded, has tested thousands of sites. It’s watched more than 3,000 users try to perform tasks online, even following their eyes to see where they look.
And he has some frightening news: Nobody looks at picture advertising.
Nielsen, in a keynote address at the inaugural Web Experience Forum in Boston, Mass., said web design is doomed to failure unless we learn from end users. And one major lesson is that other than paid search, ads don’t work. “We call this banner blindness — people won’t see ads at all,” said Nielsen. “Ads might as well not exist as far as users are concerned, except for search ads.” The number of web users that so much as glance at banner ads, he added, is too small to even quantify.
The findings are no secret to web usability professionals gathered here, who obsess over how consumers use the web. But they’re often ignored by ad buyers.
“For the longest time, the web has been in collective denial of this phenomenon,” said Nielsen. “People still have this old media thinking: They think of the web being similar to TV because it’s on the screen and visual. The main distinction is whether it’s active or passive, not whether it’s on a screen or not.” Advertising revenues, which pay for much of the web, are having a rough year, with some analysts cutting their estimates for the entire sector.
Nielsen pointed out that paid search still works — partly because it’s relevant, and partly because users aren’t tuning ads out. “We thought we’d find [paid search] box blindness the way we did banner blindness, but that’s not the case. Users are interested in search ads and actually look at them.”
According to the latest Brewer’s Droop, Neilsen is reporting that SA Internet expenditure has grown by 51%.
Radio by 16%. Print by 11%.
Share of the advertising cake is:
TV………….40%
Print……….38%
Radio……….13%
Outdoor……..4%
Cinema………2%
Internet…….2%
Direct Mail….1%
Advertising is the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
— Bill Cosby
