So what is Ad Blindness?

Before we talk about Ad Blindness, let’s go back to 1998. At that time, Benway and Lane, a research team, reported the result of studies requiring users to find information located in banned ads. Contrary to the prevailing marketing philosophy that the larger an item on a Web page, the greater its perceived visual importance and likelihood of attracting attention, Benway and Lane found that users had more difficulty finding information when it was located in a banner ad. Benway and Lane called this phenomenon “Banner Blindness” [ source ]

The point is, banner blindness is the tendency of people to ignore banner ads on Web sites. Experts believe that banner blindness occurs because experienced Web users are in “search mode” and tend to ignore banner ads as irrelevant for their search. [ source ]

Ad Blindness is similar to Banner Blindness. In the context of Google AdSense, Ad Blindness occurs when the colors of your AdSense ads stick out too much, thus make the readers immediately identify them as ads and not even look at them. It can also happen to frequent readers who visit the site regularly. As they start getting used to it, they will, at certain point, ignore the ads.

One of the solution to handle Ad Blindness is to regularly change the AdSense ads layout or positioning, probably once a month. You can also try to rotate the AdSense color template, so visitors will see a different AdSense color everytime it appears. Another solution is to blend AdSense ads more with your site, as it will likely reduce the chance of Ad Blindness’ occurance.

Don’t forget to use AdSense channel feature. It’s a good tool to find out whether your AdSense ads unit has suffered from the Ad Blindness or not. If one (or more) of them received low CTR, then your visitors probably do not aware of that ads unit.