There’s a term in the advertising world used to refer to someone who’s learned to ignore ads on websites and social media to the point where their brain literally refuses to see, acknowledge or process information in banner ads.

The term is “banner blindness.”

It’s the one type of blindness we are all grateful to develop, even those of us who are internet advertisers.

For example, on this heat map study tracking eye movement of Facebook Users, you’ll notice that the majority of users pretty much ignore the “Right Hand Side” ads.

Another eye tracking study tracked eye movement for a news site (similar to a blog) and notice how the banner on the left is completely ignored, relative to the content in the middle.

Over the years, mentors of mine taught about ‘banner blindness’ and conveyed the importance of doing whatever you could to snap website visitors out of that state of ‘blindness’ and to notice your ad.

So even if you had strong ad copy, it wouldn’t really matter unless you could ‘break the blindness’ issue and literally attract eyeballs.