Stop blasting us with unwanted sound, web users tell advertisers
One of online users’ biggest turn-offs is when websites run ads that play sound without prior warning, says a survey published today.
According to the survey of 7,000 visitors to News Digital Media sites, 70% said ads playing sound automatically are not okay, with 59% surfing with their sound turned off to avoid it playing unexpectedly. And in another warning around attention-grabbing ads, 57% said they would like a brand less if they found its ad annoying, although most said they wouldn’t bother to tell the advertiser that.
But the Connecting Campaigns study suggests that relevance could outweigh privacy concerns when it comes to targeted advertising. A total of 45% of respondents said they would prefer to receive ads that are targeted to their interests – nearly twice the number those who did not.
The survey also said that trust in the host site is a factor in the credibility of ads, with 42% of respondents finding advertising more believable on host websites they trust.
It also suggests that video has now gone mainstream, with 92% of users saying they have watched video content on a website . However, the biggest barrier to this cited was download speed.
Ed Smith, NDN’s chief commercial officer, said: “What we saw in the Connecting Campaigns report is a strong preference from consumers to receive advertisements targeted to their interests. Trust of the host website remains crucial to a brand developing an effective and cost efficient campaign online with 42% of respondents finding advertising more credible on host websites they trust.”
“The report’s findings provide a clearer picture on user habits that need to be considered when developing a campaign, such as, actively avoiding advertisements that automatically play sound by turning their volume down and not watching videos more than five minutes in length.”
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They need a survey to tell them people hate audio playing audio ads?
Could have saved money and read some quotes from my blogpost http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/in.....oy-people/
eg: by my friend @Stilgherrian: “Dear Fairfax, video adverts which auto-play with sound turned on are REALLY F*CKING ANNOYING and make me hate you and your advertisers””
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I read this comment by @atetlaw just this morning: “theage.com.au : get rid of auto-play video ads – consider that some people read the paper when they get into work where noise is unwelcome.”
Over-the-page and video ads are two reasons why I keep my adshields up (thanks Adblock Plus) when visiting Fairfax media sites. And with Fairfax OTP prices coming down, I wager these ads will become increasingly common.
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For me the issue is not so much the audio but ads that don’t let you turn the audio off, or ads that run on a loop rather than playing the audio once only. Give people options.
There was an especially awful one on either smh.com.au or news.com.au recently that had the regular beeping noise of a supermarket scanner. I had to turn my speakers off because the beeping was driving me mental.
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Totally agree with that survey…video and audio should not be automatically run on sites without the viewers permission
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Happy for video to be played, but without sound and with a clear X to close it in the corner. Also, it should not take over the whole screen. Sound should be easily turned on by clicking a big sound button somewhere so I can listen if I want to.
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Funny, I was twittering about this only an hour ago.
When I was publisher of a Fairfax title in New Zealand I sat through a presentation by a company that makes those intrusive pop-up online video ads you’ll see on SMH.com.au.
I remember two things:
First, the amount of money a publisher gets isn’t very high — if I remember correct it was less than we were already getting from normal banners or boombox ads. This meant we were pissing off our audience for hardly any reward.
Second, the company selling these ads knows they annoy web users, so the number served up is limited to, I think, only one or two a day — apparently that’s the audience acceptance threshold.
Which, presumably, means the people serving up those other online ads where sound and video intrudes with each page served, and I’ve seen some recently which run as a continuous loop, KNOW they are killing the site’s audience: business suicide.
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People read news sites at work. That means they’ll shut down anything that gives the fact they’re not spreadsheeting away like a good little drone. As quickly as they can. \
Blaring noise tends to give the game away. It would be great to see some stats on length of page visit on pages with sound ads vs length on those without.
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With so few worker bees having sound on in the office (Eyeblaster quotes just a mere 5%) why are we continuing to the blast the internet with creative orginally intended for TV? Have we not learnt from the days when TV was invented and radio content was continually flogged on the new visual channel? If it is
obligatory to keep the TVC on ‘life support’ online, then perhaps subtitles should be included….. because there really aren’t many digital ears turned on during the day!
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Further research indicates that people love monkeys.
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I’m constantly puzzled why no TV network has commissioned monkey tennis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEwZ-1s9-SU#t=7m06s
Those tennis-playing monkeys could give Shaun Micallef a savage beating. Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation? Sweet Monkey Christ…
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