The concept of banner blindness has existed since 1994. That's when the news portal Wired.com, which today ranks among the largest news authorities of its kind, decided to talk about it publicly. In general, it can be said that this is a trend that all websites containing online advertising are struggling with. But what exactly is banner blindness and how can you fight it?
What is banner blindness?
The article was revised and updated in May 2026.
Banner blindness can be described as consciously (but mostly subconsciously) ignoring advertising banners or other advertising elements on your site. In short, it is about ignoring online advertising. It does not matter whether it is a relevant or irrelevant advertisement for the customer. His subconscious will simply tell his eyes to automatically skip parts of the page with advertisements.
There are a set of ad placements that automatically fall under banner blindness. It is mainly advertising at the top and bottom of the page, but often also ads on the side of the website fall into this category.
The reason is mainly low-quality advertisements
Banner blindness has its roots mainly in low-quality advertisements. They often encourage unrealistic winnings in competitions, or display dialog boxes with false communication or information about a virus on their computer. Their typical part is buttons "okay" and "Cancel", which in both cases, when clicked, lead the reader to the advertiser's website. In principle, these are advertisements that want to deceive the reader (directly or indirectly).
The problem with low-quality ads is that if the reader sees them on the web, he will automatically include the part of the website where he saw such an ad as ignored. If the website also places an advertisement relevant to the reader at this location in the future, he or she tends to ignore the announcement or trust it less. Websites providing online advertising space should therefore think very carefully about what kind of advertising they will display to their readers.
How to defend against banner blindness?
There are several ways to correct the adverse online advertising situation caused by banner blindness on the web. It is especially A/B testing ads, which can evaluate which advertisement is more interesting for readers and can engage them more. However, the so-called heatmaps, which will show the website owner an exact map of where their readers' cursor has moved.
However, the most effective way to combat banner blindness is to use of native advertising. The one on the website can be displayed as a form of the entire article with a link to the presented product or service, or it can be part of other native content - video, newsletter, or post on social networks.
It is also possible to change the state of banner blindness by inserting really relevant and high-quality ads on places of online banners, but it is time-consuming to change the mentality of people who have already included the given place in their subconscious mind as a place where they saw an advertisement that wanted to deceive them.
Ad-blockers are a separate category
A natural consequence of the large amount of low-quality ads and banner blindness are ad-blockers, i.e. "ad blockers". They were invented by people who simply couldn't stand low-quality ads anymore. Today, however, a large part of your readers use them, thus depriving your company of profits. However, there is a solution to this problem as well.
But it requires a dose of courage and self-confidence. If you think that you offer your readers really high-quality content, you can limit its availability to only those readers who turn off ad-block on your website. You can alert them to this with a pop-up window with a link to a section in which you explain why they should allow ads to be displayed on your website. Quality content will not be created by itself, and you also need finances to run a website. Explain it to them, and if they really like your content, they can understand. If not, then it's time to think not only about displaying better (and especially native) ads, but also about creating better content.
You can also fight against banner blindness by changing the design and incorporating banners in less common places. We will be happy to help you improve your website and give you a helping hand in creating and placing ads.
Source: 1and1.com
