User attention is finite. Online publishers have often yielded to the temptation of trying to grab a bit more than their fair share of it; understandable, given the profit motive. The result, though, can be either a tragedy of the commons situation ("banner blindness") or just a loss of interest in a portal's cluttered offerings (Excite, AltaVista).
Opening up My Yahoo today I was treated to a type of pop-up that did, to its credit, have a "close" box so I could shut it off. However, it was moving slowly across the screen, right to left, making it quite possible to miss the close button and click on the ad.
Analysts are fond of saying that Yahoo understands advertising better than Google, and particularly understands big brand advertisers. Maybe, but they've often been a bit fuzzier when it comes to understanding their real bread and butter, users. Yes, Yahoo has many users, and no, they're not going to abandon the portal anytime soon. But that user confidence can erode quickly once the tipping point is reached; death by a thousand cuts.
Google, also seeking revenue and jealous that others may be grabbing more than their fair share of finite user attention, is now testing three ads at the top of the SERP's pages as well as ad units with longer body text. It's quite possible that such tests will eventually show no decline in user satisfaction, at least on the surface. But the process of eroding confidence is subtle, so they ought to think twice about proceeding even on the basis of a positive test.
It pays to err on the side of caution, as Google's short history proves.
Posted by Andrew Goodman
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