US Youngsters Accustomed To Less Online Advertising Than Adults

Since websites designed for children have little or no advertising, said Nielsen, it is perhaps not surprising that the youngest web visitors are typically exposed to a low level of clutter.

But even teens, the highest indexing age group on MySpace, encounter relatively low clutter levels.

From a content perspective, more niche websites, which attract smaller audiences, tend to have higher clutter.

Jon Gibbs, vice president, media analytics, Nielsen Online, said: “For decades, advertisers and publishers have struggled to define the right balance of content and advertising.

“Used in conjunction with other metrics, such as unique audience, the clutter measure provides a relative benchmark to help media buyers understand the websites that provide the optimal level of impressions and acceptable amount of clutter.”

Research from Ball State University and ExactTarget found that 18 to 34-year-olds in the US are more influenced by email and direct mail than marketing messages via social networks (see Younger People Prefer Email Ads).

A recent study from Dynamic Logic, meanwhile, revealed that consumers continue to feel that the “appropriate” number of ads that appear over the content of the web pages they are browsing is two per hour (see Over-Content Ads Becoming More Acceptable).