Be careful when reading headlines alerting advertisers to the fact that not every single web ad is not thoroughly analyzed by its intended target. Although it is true that web users do ignore ads, so do newspaper readers, TV watchers, radio listeners…

Silicon Alley Insider has a post on a recent(ish) eye-tracking study done on web users, one finding of which was that web users tend to look at content, and not ads. SAI’s take on that finding is to make your ads look more like content.

Personally, I think the answer is not to make your ads look like content, because when readers figure out the scam, they’ll be angry. I think the answer is to surround your web ads with quality content. Then web users will be looking intently at your page and will see the ads along with the content.

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