Posted by Doug Caverly

Considering how hated pop-ups have become, and that ad-blocking software is quite popular in certain circles, it might be easy for everyone to believe that online ads are universally not liked.  Still, new research suggests that people find online ads useful, so long as they’re truly being informative or doing consumers a favor.

An eMarketer article published today cited statistics from About.com’s 2010 Consumer Study, which involved a significant number of female U.S. online shoppers (representing 71 percent of participants).  The article stated, “More than one-half of online buyers found online ads helpful when researching and shopping online.”

More specifically, it turned out that 53 percent of the study’s respondents appreciate it when ads make them aware of a product or service they didn’t previously know about.  And 33 percent of them like it when ads help them comparison shop and save money.

So these are obviously facts upon which ecommerce professionals should be able to capitalize, since ads that serve these purposes seem likely to get better-than-average responses.  Perhaps advertising in places a little outside the norm for a given industry might cover the “informative” angle.  With regards to saving people money, well, that’s pretty straightforward so long as the budget allows for price-cutting.

As for what sorts of approaches might be avoided, only 10 percent of the study’s respondents think it’s useful when ads try to help them find what they’re looking for.  Then the “other” category - which must cover an awful lot of stuff - got just 5 percent of the vote.  Meaning a lot of companies may want to reconsider how (in)effective their standard online ads have been.

Finally, here are a couple more of About.com’s findings worth thinking about: according to the eMarketer article, “Printable tips were also most likely to earn the notice of US Internet users, cited by 60% as the most attention-grabbing kind of online advertisement.  Video ads came in a distant second, at 19%.”

Ecommerce professionals should consider using all of this information to create a test campaign, at least, and see how it performs next to standard ads.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 9:37 am and is filed under News. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

About the Author: Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.