Traffick: The Business of Search

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Citizen MSN

According to CBS Marketwatch, Microsoft has just announced that it's going to decrease the prominence of Overture sponsored links on MSN Search beginning July 1. Could it be that they've now taken seriously Jakob Nielsen's concern that text links could fall victim to the same "banner blindness" that afflicted other forms of online advertising?

The principle is fairly simple: in an online setting, messages get taken more seriously when they're inobtrusive, respectful, and targeted. In other words, when they aren't aimed at users' foreheads with all the precision of a 16-ton anvil.

Ad agency types may now respectfully disagree.

Posted by Andrew Goodman

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