I remember hearing or reading how too many ads dull the brain until it ignores them all. Anyone can refer me to any sources/studies on this subject?
Well, one of the main experts on web usability, Jakob Nielsen, in his articleTop 10 Mistakes in Web Design lists:
7. Anything That Looks Like an Advertisement
saying “Web users have learned to stop paying attention to any ads that get in the way…” and will also ignore anything that looks like an advertisement. So web designers have to be careful that none of their content looks that way, or web users will just ignore it.
So at least on the Internet, advertisement over saturation seems to have been already reached. So now they are going to pop-up ads, ads that show before they show the video you want to watch, etc.
It’s an iron rule of Internet Marketing that ad clickthrough rates always go down over time. Every once in a while, someone will invent a new ad unit and the novel form of advertising starts off with pretty good clickthrough rates which then start dropping precipitously.
If you look at modern eye tracking studies, most people never even consciously register conventional ad units anymore.
Thanks guys! Could anyone refer me to studies you have cited?
Market researcher, formerly employed at an ad agency, checking in.
There’s a ton of research on the topic (it’s often called “wearout” in the industry). Unfortunately, the vast majority of the research is done by private ad-research companies, and you won’t find much of it publicly available online.
The general thought is that, yes, individual advertising executions, as well as overall exposure to ads in a particular medium, do become less effective with repeated exposure. As noted above, advertisers constantly try to find novel executions, to break through that level of clutter and over-exposure.