How I busted "banner blindness" and got 2.6 times more clicks

[djbaxter]

From Antone Roundy's Newsletter:

Do enough people click the banner ads on your website? I read a study that said that the average click-through rate for banner ads for most of 2008 was only 0.12%! (And it's getting worse every year.)

I've posted a video that shows how I made one little change to one of my websites and immediately boosted my click-through rates by over 2.6 times. Check it out here -- I think you'll find what the change was interesting:

YouTube - Case Study: How to Bust Banner Blindness

I've just watched the video and I'm left with a number of questions and observations, more about what was NOT said than about what WAS said.

1. While this seems like an interesting gimmick, and it did appear to increase CTR for Mr. Roundy, he fails to mention whether that increased CTR translated to increased sales. I suspect not. Indeed, I suspect that it may even have a negative effect on sales, if the visitor felt deceived and annoyed by the deception.
   
2. Mr. Roundy fails to mention that techniques like this are expressly forbidden in the ToS for Google AdSense and probably for many other advertisers and ad publishing agreements.

What do you think?

 

[kbldshmn]

Thanks for the video. I did not realize that banners have such a low CTR.