Home > All articles  Your advertisement here   Ad Clutter Benefits No One One obstacle to getting consumers’ attention online is ad clutter. We define ad clutter as the overcrowding of a web page with advertising units to the point of degrading the web users’ experience. Burst recently surveyed over 4,000 web users to better understand two things: how clutter impacts the web users Internet experience, and its impact on their perception of advertisers. * Ad clutter is not tolerated by web site visitors – many web users abandon a site they believe to be cluttered. * Ad clutter can negatively impact a consumers’ perception of an advertiser’s product or service. Cluttered Sites Do a Disservice to the Publisher, the Advertiser and the Visitor Clutter Annoys the Audience. The Burst survey found that respondents accept that advertising will appear on a web page. However, for a majority (52.6%) there is low tolerance for more than two advertising units per web page. One-quarter of respondents (27.3%) say they will tolerate only a single advertisement per web page, and another one-quarter (25.3%) will tolerate just two ads per page. Clutter negatively impacts the audience and leads to site abandonment. More than one-quarter (29.9%) of survey respondents immediately leave a site if they perceive it to be cluttered. Women are more likely than men to abandon a site that appears cluttered – 32.1% versus 27.5% (Chart 1). Clutter Diminishes Ad Effectiveness. Three-quarters (75.5%) of respondents who remain on a site they perceive to be cluttered say they pay less attention to advertisements appearing on its pages. This finding is consistent for men and women, as well as all age and income segments. Clutter Negatively Impacts Brand Perception. Clutter Negatively Impacts Brand Perception. The most resounding finding from this survey is the negative impact advertising clutter has on a consumer’s perception of an advertiser’s products and services. One out of two (52.4%) respondents has a less favorable opinion of an advertiser when their advertising appears on a web page they perceive as cluttered. Women are more likely than men to say that clutter negatively impacts their opinion of an advertiser, 56.4% versus 48.3% respectively. Additionally, clutter’s negative impact on respondents’ opinions increases as a respondent’s age increases – rising from 46.8% of respondents 18-24 years to nearly two-thirds (63.2%) of respondents 55 years and older. > More information     By KS Date 02-01-2009 Print this news| Send to a friend Your advertisement here