When you’re dealing with digital marketing, you’ll do your best at all times to ensure that the strategy you devise, as well as each of the advertising campaigns you launch online, brings the best results for the company’s business. That’s the point, isn’t it?
Meet the User Vision Regarding Online Advertising
Everyone who’s in that business knows how much knowledge, skills, and time it takes to invest in order for the effort to pay off in the end. You need to make smart decisions, know the details of the industry in which you operate, and be constantly up to date with trends, especially in the world of Internet marketing, where everything is developing very quickly.
With all that in mind, the importance of the marketing team in one company is unequivocal. It depends on how good the ad itself will be and whether it will reach the target group, i.e. all those who are current and potential users or, hopefully, future users of the desired products and services.
On the other hand, there are consumers of advertising solutions placed on the Internet, or generally speaking – Internet users. They have their own vision and experience in online advertising. Often, perhaps even too often, customer’s expectations don’t match the desires and plans of targeted marketing team campaigns. How to change that situation?
Marketing also has its increasingly technical nature and as a marketing expert, you should invest efforts in taking the most of highly important assets for driving leads and awareness for your brand – the website. It sits at the heart of any digital marketing strategy, with the purpose of directing the traffic that can be converted. Digital marketing components, such as content strategy, SEO, and social media marketing are all directly impacted by the website.
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Below you’ll find out which techniques are the least desirable from the user’s point of view, but also in what way digital advertising campaigns can still be successful if they are approached in a carefully thought out way.
What Does the Research Show?
One of the significant expert researches on this topic was conducted in June 2017 by the Nielsen Norman Group, which specializes in researching the user experience on the Internet, including 452 Internet users from the USA, who aren’t employed in the IT industry nor positioned as marketing experts.
By answering questions about desirable and undesirable types of ads on the Internet, respondents were given the opportunity to express their views. It turned out, as the results show, that users didn’t express excessive affection towards any type of ad, but a more neutral affection. They are much more negative, it would be said, emphasizing even a high level of stress because certain ads interfere with their privacy, while others block access to websites and restrict their work.
The fact that users, however, are more irritated by advertisements on the Internet than by genuinely being angry opponents of this type of advertising is confirmed by the average score for all types of advertisements in the mentioned research, which is 5.23. The grade is positioned on a scale from one to seven, with grade 1 given for an extremely positive attitude towards a particular type of marketing, and grade 7 for an extremely negative attitude.
For the sake of comparison, similar research has already been conducted, more than 10 years before this, in which as many as 95 % of the respondents stated that they can’t stand so-called pop-up ads. More than 90 % of the respondents then pointed out that they don’t like ads that can’t be removed, as well as those that don’t clearly indicate what they refer to, deceive, and affect the regrouping of content on the page, or occupy most of the page.
Important fact: Numerous studies have shown that a negative attitude towards a particular type of ad results in a negative preconception of users towards the company whose ad it is. In a survey conducted in the United States between December 2001 and February 2003, as many as half of the 18,808 respondents said that so-called pop-up ads negatively affect their attitudes toward advertisers, while 40 % said it created a bad opinion of the website where the ads are placed.
Which Marketing Techniques Do Internet Users Like Less?
Collectively, statistics from previous research have shown that users may have a neutral attitude towards some types of ads but also that there are certain digital marketing techniques that are more hated than others. Why? Because certain ads, as they say, disturb users on the Internet while searching for what interests them, because they suddenly pop up in the middle of the page, they are often manipulative but also because they distract and don’t give relevant information in return.
Users also consider such ads “unnecessary”, “meaningless”, “irritating because they refuse to disappear” and so on. The list of negative comments and explanations of why Internet users don’t like ads is quite long.
Do you now understand the difficult position of marketing experts? If you’re one of them, try as hard as you can NOT TO USE the forms of marketing that we’ll be about to present to you here. Because these are techniques that users like the least and avoid them whenever the opportunity arises. With such forms of marketing, your campaigns won’t have a great chance of success.
Top List: 5 Less Desirable Digital Marketing Techniques
The list is made from the least hated techniques to the most irritating ones:
Banners That Are Persistent
When we say persistent banners, we mean ads that are positioned in a certain place on the web page, usually at the top or bottom, and don’t move from that place regardless of what’s happening on the page.
If the user lowers the content, the banner follows it. If the user returns to the top of the page, the banner follows it as well. And it doesn’t move from its position. This type of ad was rated by users as very irritating, whether it was used on desktop computers or on mobile devices.
Links That Mislead
These are called deceptive links and refer to hypertext within content that causes the reader to think that the link leads to certain content related to the topic but it turns out to be an advertisement.
Also, deceptive links can be found on pages where users are expected to perform certain activities – filling out forms, downloading files, etc. Such links are located right next to the action button and can easily lead the user to click on them by mistake.
Ads Within Content
This category contains ads that are positioned within the text on a particular website and are called intra-content ads. There are two groups.
One is usually at the beginning of the content and its opening reorganizes the position of the written text. It’s this technique that is less liked by the users, compared to the other group – the ads that are in the middle of the content but their opening doesn’t disturb the appearance of the page in any way.
A Video That Plays Automatically
When a user plays certain video content on the Internet, it’s often the case that the video ad is played automatically (auto-play video) before the desired recording begins.
In case an advertisement can’t be stopped or skipped after five seconds, users consider it a waste of their time and patience and they don’t prefer this type of ad at all.
Ads That Cover Content
These are called modal ads and they appear over the content on a particular website. By their very appearance, they block everything else and only when the user physically closes the ad they can continue to interact with the content on the website.
It seems that this type of ad is the most hated among users since in the above-mentioned research of the Nielsen Norman Group it was rated with the most negative comments and it also received the highest rating (5.82), which means the highest degree of dislike.
How to Make Users Begin to Appreciate Ads on the Internet?
All of the above said doesn’t mean that certain digital marketing techniques should be completely abolished or deleted from strategies. It’s only important to use all the possibilities wisely and with moderation, so as not to cause side effects.
To begin with, keep in mind that the best-rated forms of digital marketing are within the mentioned research:
- Static ads on one side of the screen (mostly right)
- Related links
- Paid promotional content on social networks
- Banners at the bottom of the page
- In-text ads that don’t move content
Also, follow these guidelines to keep your online ads positively rated by your target audience:
- When designing, make sure that the ad doesn’t occupy most of the web page
- Allow users to have control over the ad
- Ensure quality load speeds
- Make it clear that this is an ad and let them know what will happen after they click on the banner
- Don’t use techniques that automatically play sound
- Provide additional information so that users don’t have to leave the page
- Make sure whether you create an ad to display on desktop computers or on mobile devices. Research has shown that users of mobile devices are extra sensitive to the size of the ads that occupy their already small screens.
Conclusion
Guided by the motto that we shouldn’t do to others what we don’t want others to do to us, we can conclude that marketing experts should always keep in mind the approach of the other party, i.e. those for whom their ads are intended.
For more than 15 years, users have been facing similar types of ads on the Internet that are repulsive to them. Don’t take this information for granted and don’t simply join this (unpopular) trend. Try to change something.
Contrary to the growing use of artificial intelligence for processing large amounts of data for marketing purposes, and even as opposed to generic (i.e. machine-written texts), the human approach still isn’t losing importance.
On the contrary, it could be said that it’s more important now than ever before. Why? Because people are able to create something that will really make sense and true value for the user, without trying to entice and trap them, manipulating their interests in order to sell the desired products and services. We still live in a world where quality is highly appreciated. Therefore, if you’re a marketing expert, wisely handle the Internet marketing techniques available to you. Current, potential, and future users of products and services will be able to recognize this. They will reward you with trust and a strong emotional connection with the brand, which won’t be so easily broken. Then, you will know that the effort paid off in the end.
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