As we've told you in the past, one of the biggest challenges advertisers face on the web is making sure the ads they pay publishers to display are actually seen by the people who visit the site.
Media tracking firm comScore estimates that nearly half of internet display ads are not viewable, meaning that people can't see them either because they are loaded in places that don't show up on their screens or because publishers fraudulently serve layers of ads behind the page shown to the public.
But according to Sticky, a firm that uses eye-tracking technology to figure out exactly which ads people look at, the actual number of ads people see is closer to 14%. According to company president Jeff Bander, people's brains are trained not to look at certain places on a page, meaning many ads publishers serve are merely white noise.
1. Images on the left, text on the right
When a brand displays a logo, it's important for the image to be on the left, with text residing on the right.
Here's why: the right side of our brains are used to process images and the brain processes visual information inversely. In order for the brain to process an image on the right side of a logo, it would first have to flip the image over again before doing so. This saves your brain work, and makes it less likely that its 100 billion neurons will shift focus to something else.
2. Use ambiguous facial expressions
When the brain encounters a face, it goes through a mental checklist of all the facial expressions it's seen previously. If the brain sees a smiley face or a frown, it immediately recognizes that the person in question is happy or sad, and then goes on to something else. But using an ambiguous facial expression forces the brain to investigate your image further.
Like the Mona Lisa. How many hours have people spent over the years trying to figure out what she's thinking?
3. Less is more
As anyone who has ever illegally downloaded TV shows online already knows, inundating someone with ads makes it less likely that they'll actually consider them.
"With ad-blocking technology advancing, publishers need to balance between ad revenue and content more than ever," Bander said. "Smart publishers will limit the number of ads and ultimately increase revenue because consumers will put up with ads if they are not the dominant real estate on the site."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider