Fewer ads drive more attention on websites, finds Lumen and Mail Metro Media
Digital environments with lower ad loads drive more attention and improve brand recall and purchase intent.
That is according to a study conducted by attention measurement firm Lumen Research in partnership with Mail Metro Media and Havas Media Network UK, which examines the impact of low-ad-load environments on both readers and advertisers.
The Centre for Attention: The Premium Edition study simulated the Daily Mail website, showing participants pages featuring up to five ads per page on desktop and up to three on mobile, compared with up to 15 ads in current environments. It featured eight “well-known” brands.
The research found that the more premium layout resulted in the percentage of participants viewing the ad increasing from 53% to 78%. As a result, the brand achieved a 4.2x higher spontaneous recall, 2.2x higher attentive seconds, and an 8% lift in purchase intent compared to the standard, higher-ad-load environment.
The study also found that ad attention declined as consumers scrolled further down the page by a factor of 10, suggesting that first-slot formats and higher-share-of-voice formats are superior investments.
In addition, three-quarters of respondents said that advertising in the premium environment did not disrupt their browsing. On desktop, there was a 17% reduction in perception that the pages felt “busy”.
“The data clearly shows that advertising effectiveness is shaped by the quality and context of the environment where it appears,” concluded Lumen Research CEO Mike Follett. “When publishers reduce ad load, they create environments that encourage greater engagement and slower scrolling. This gives ads a better chance of crossing the 2.5-second cognitive threshold needed for messages to resonate, which both Daily Mail premium formats easily surpassed.”
He added: “More inventory does not create more impact; too many ads can dilute attention.”
‘Fresh team, fresh approach’: Mail Metro Media on becoming a ‘modern broadcast publisher’
Value not volume
The findings come as digital publishers, faced with rapidly declining referral traffic from Google’s AI search modes, are beginning to pivot away from volume-based business models in favour of creating and selling more premium environments that feature fewer ads.
According to benchmarking data from Ozone, ad supply fell 40% year-on-year in Q2 as traffic dropped. In response, Digiday reported that UK publishers have increased eCPMs (effective cost per mille) by an average of 30% to soften the blow to their bottom lines. In other words, publishers are focusing more on quality than quantity and pricing their ad inventory accordingly.
The Mail, for example, has instituted a significantly lighter ad load on its new .com website, reducing its average ads per page from seven to five over the past year.
Nick Timms, Mail Metro Media’s MD of ad product, told The Media Leader this has led to attention on ads doubling and the average time readers are spending on articles jumping 25%. It has also allowed the publisher’s commercial team to be more discerning about its client list.
Reach, the UK’s largest publisher, has likewise signalled it will eschew its long-held volume-based approach to publishing in favour of improving reader and ad quality.
The company reported a 9% year-on-year decline in revenue in H1 to £232.9m. Digital revenues (-11.3%) fell notably faster than print revenues (-8.3%), in part due to reduced referral traffic.
“We are building a stronger business by investing in digital subscriptions and video, securing greater independence from referral traffic,” said Reach CEO Piers North. “Our future will be less about volume and more about original content, distinctive brands and securing better returns.”
In an op-ed for The Media Leader, Follett likens these decisions to no longer “killing the golden goose”.
He wrote: “Publishers don’t exist to maximise advertising revenue. Advertising revenue is what happens when publishers maximise reader value.
“That distinction matters because it changes the objective. Instead of asking how much revenue can be extracted from today’s page, publishers begin asking how valuable tomorrow’s page could become. One mindset harvests the goose. The other looks after it.”
Samantha Eales, Mail Metro Media’s head of commercial audience data and a member of The Media Leader‘s Future 100 Club, acknowledged that the digital advertising industry “has long relied on sheer volume of impressions, often at the expense of user experience.”
She continued: “This research shows that less means more for both readers and brands. Advertising served in trusted, engaged and premium publisher environments with fewer ads on the page creates high-attention environments where brands experience an uplift in upper and lower-funnel KPIs”.
How publishers are fighting to protect their copyright from AI companies