Online ad network Burst Media has released the results of a survey of over 4,000 Web visitors on their response to “ad clutter.” Here are the main takeaways:

• Ad-cluttered sites make visitors more likely to leave (30% immediately leave what they believe to be ad-cluttered sites) and less likely to pay attention to ads (75.5% of respondents)
• More than two ad units are tolerated by 47.4% of respondents; 27.3% will only tolerate one ad unit per page, and 25.3% will tolerate two ad units per page
• 52.4% of respondents said that an ad’s presence on a cluttered site reflects badly on the advertiser;
• There are some gender and age differences. Women are 17% more likely than men to abandon a site they feel is cluttered with ads, while 55+ visitors were 35% more likely than those in the 18-24 age set to do the same. Women were also 17% more likely than men to think ad clutter reflects badly on advertisers.

Results like these seem to underscore the benefit of blending ads, and making sure ads are congruent with your site design. And, as our own data shows, maximizing the number of ads does not necessarily maximize revenue for the page. Cluttering up a site with ads is a double whammy: it makes visitors both less likely to click on ads, and less likely to ever visit the site again.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Online Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.