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Attention Grabbing, Targeted Ads May Creep Out Consumers

by Terrence O'Brien on June 18, 2010 at 10:00 AM

targeted ad for weight lossWhen it comes to online advertising you've have a couple of primary strategies to consider -- attention grabbers with sound and video, or targeted ads based on browsing habits. But, according to a recent study, you should never combine those two tactics.

It turns out that pop-over, media rich ads are great at grabbing attention and are very memorable. Meanwhile, discreet context-sensitive text ads lead to higher a number of consumers planning to purchase goods. But combining the two things actually diminished the number of planned purchases. For some unknown reason, consumers do not react positively to advertisements that both demand their attention and terrify them with intimate, targeted information.

Our theory is that consumers have been trained not to trust pop-up ads or or attention-grabbers online, like shady websites and spyware. If you include information related to a browsing habits, they stop being annoying and start being creepy, turning off potential customers. We live in the era of Facebook and Google where online privacy is a serious public concern, so drawing attention to information collection and habit monitoring is probably not the best marketing strategy. [From: Physorg.com, via: Engadget]

Tags: ads, advertising, BehavioralTargeting, privacy, targeted advertising, TargetedAdvertising, top

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