"Banner Blindness" and perception

"Banner blindness is a fact. Similarly, there are now several experiments that confirm that banners still have a behavioral effect, and no experiments have concluded they do not."

iMedia Connection recently posted an article about the effect of banner ads on internet users. (http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/25737.asp). It's interesting because it's true! When on a website, I ignore the side ads and especially the top of the page as I am on a mission for the content in the middle that I have specifically searched out.

However, in this article, Franck Largeault claims through his research that there is still mental perception occurring. Sensation is the act of receiving, translating, and transmitting of raw sensory data, in this case the banner ad. Perception is the interpretation and organization of this sensory data. In Aldous Huxely's book, The Doors of Perception, describing his experience on mescaline, Huxely describes his deduction of a mental filter. When on mescaline, Huxely's filter is widened/removed, overwhelming him with sensory data that other wise would be unnoticed by the average state of mind. He goes beyond the contextual ideas of function to focus on form. When seeing banner ads, we are aware of their primary function and enable our representational skills of past memories and experiences to ignore them. We literally avoid looking at them, as the article reiterates.

In a high school psychology class I took, I remember watching a film about an experiment of tracking the eye's movement. In the experiment, when the person walked into the room, they picked out their friend in the crowd and directed their attention to that person. When asked what they observed in the room, they primarily said the people they personally knew and recognized. However, when reviewing the footage from the camera on the eye, which detected the instantaneous and invisible movements of the eye that are so quick that they are consciously unnoticed. In this viewpoint, the subject had also focused on the attractive girl in the back of the room along with many other details of his surrounds that asked about had no conscience recognition. The brain had gather all of this sensory data but only that data that the conscience felt relevant was processed. This plays into Largeault's experiment stating results that though we do not look directly at a banner ad or remember the content of it, the ad can still affect our recognition and association of the brand when seen else where, because we are still picking up on the visual sensory data of it.

As a consumer I hate banner ads, the distraction they impose, and the effort put into ignoring them. They bother me to do something that I frankly don't care about and in that I find annoying. Yet as a designer, I understand a new purpose for them that when designed correctly, my consumer side could also find to appreciate. I've always enjoyed ads that are visually appealing or enticing or that ad some comedic relief to the day, and I believe if banner ads where directed for this purpose, they would be more successful. Not directly through the click-through rate by which they are measured now, but overall brand recognition.

"Largeault's research suggests that the more visually simple the banner design is, the more effective it becomes.[...] You cannot convey any information with such a banner, but you can implant it in someone's memory." This should be the proper use of banner ads that all designers should take note of so that our consumer sides can exist with out disdain for one's self.