Remember when you used to have that conversation about how you read a book from left to right although pick up a magazine and flick through right to left? We know that marketing science suggests that the reader looks at a page starting in the top left, across the top and them down the right had side and we base our advertising on this. Have you stopped to think though how these habits have evolved since digital communication platforms and social media have appeared on the scene? My tweets arrive on my phone and I scroll them down, Reading from the bottom up but apply this to a forum and you confuse the reader, the reader of a forum expects to read the first comment at the top followed by the responses as they scroll the page. A controversial one, but use the same theory for a comments box under say a video or tutorial and the reader now presumes they will read the most recent comment at the top. I say controversial as I do hear a debate the other day on the way we should implement a video portal with this scenario. So you might think it stops there but like you often click on replies to threads at the bottom of a forum post to read expansion and replies to certain threads, now think about how you consume your reading on a wiki site. You read as normal but intelligent linking offers the expansion of information based on certain keywords. For those who don’t need to you carry on reading as usual but if the keyword suggest an area in which you need more data in order to support the overall subject of interesting you break the linear reading convention and branch of to better your knowledge, combine d with your browsers functionality you return to original subject and read on, a little bit wiser. This has brought a convention, if you visit for example the Apple development site the pages / PDF’s are written in this way. It’s clever, offering consumption choices one stage beyond that of the chaptering and contents in a book, improving the efficiency of how much we actually need to read.
So my first question is this, and probably one for the eye trackers! given the changing viewing patterns for the media how does effect the placements of advertising on a page? If the eye no longer follows a routine patterns and documents are viewed in very different ways, is the header banner or the right hand (column 3) the best place for the advert.
This becomes even more interesting when we add video or interactive graphics to the mix and this is something I learnt a lot about following the Chinwag forum for IPTV producers. Obviously the initial trend was to include pre, post and mid role adverting or possible and overlayed advert that reacts to a mouse action but to what extent does this put off the viewer and also with a page of content, how much does the viewers eye deviate from the video during playback? Is there a pattern or obvious place to place advertising on the surrounding page? Again one for the eyetrackers!
Just a couple of thought and questions for next time you conduct your digital marketing campaign!
