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Many Ad Click-Throughs Just Kids Who Don't Know Better
from the ouch dept
The latest research from the always popular with the press Nielsen Norman Group suggests that a "significant" amount of online advertising click throughs may be coming from children who can't distinguish the ads from regular content, and are attracted to the flashing/blinking excitement of an ad. They suggest that parents teach their kids how to avoid ads. While I have nothing against parents teaching their kids to distinguish advertising from real content (though, these days, it's often becoming tougher to tell...), I do wonder how "significant" these findings really are. How often are these kids clicking through on these ads, and what are they doing once they click through? From the article, it makes it sound as if these kids are just randomly clicking away on anything they see online, paying no attention to anything except what's flashing most brightly at them.
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Hell, the only reason *I* click on anything is if it's shiny, flashing or naked.
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I think it could be right on the dollar. Kids do tend to have click-it itis.
The only time I click on these ads, is by mistake, usually because the ads have been positioned to encourage such mistakes. I always close them before they fully load.
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Teach kids to discern
I've been involved in similar debates over the years, both on Slashdot & amongst my CBT & teacher friends. The argument always comes up that no wonder kinds aren't learning anything in school any more, the production value of classes is such a far cry from TV/Video Games/whatever else. The argument is that we need to jazz up classroom & other training to look as appealing as all the other media they're bombarded with. I think this is the worst thing we could do. While I agree that as much as possible, school should be interesting and most importantly engaging...first of all the education system can't possibly compete with the billions of dollars the entertainment industry spends. And second of all, it would reinforce the idea of style over substance. One of the most critical things we need to teach children today is how to discern quality information from whatever source or media it might come. Corporate America and the advertising world might prefer to have a nation of drones easy to manipulate to buy things based on what's the shiniest or flashiest, we need todays children to be able to think critically and creatively to solve problems and a large part of that is the ability to strip away the garbage and presentation and get to the quality of the idea.
Sorry for the rant.
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