Why Do People Avoid Advertising on the Internet?

Abstract

This study was designed ca provide insights into why people avoid advertising on the Internet. Recent negative trends in Internet advertising, such a.s "banner blindness" and extremely low click-through rates, make it imperative to study various factors affecting Internee ad avoidance. Accordingly, this study builds a comprehensive theoretical model explaining advertising avoidance on the Internet, We examined three latent variables of Internet ad avoidance: perceived goal impediment, perceived ad clutter, and prior negative experience. We found that these constructs successfully explain why people cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally avoid advertising messages on the Internet. Perceived goal impediment Is found to be the most significant antecedent explaining advertising avoidance on the Internet.

Media generations and their advertising attitudes and avoidance: a six-country comparison

“…The measure for advertising avoidance (Cho and Cheon 2004;Smit 1999;Smit and Neijens 2000) consisted of two items for each medium, measuring both cognitive (e.g., 'When I see advertising while browsing a website, I ignore it') and behavioral/mechanical avoidance (e.g., 'When I see advertising while browsing a website, I close the advertising window').…”

Consumer Response to Ads in Social Network Sites: An Exploration into the Role of Ad Location and Path

“…Since online advertisements coexist with other content and share bandwidth (Dreze and Hussherr 2003), and consumers tend to be more goal-directed in the Internet environment (Cho and Cheon 2004;Li, Edwards and Lee 2002), attention grabbing on the Internet is much harder to achieve than in any other medium. That is, ad avoidance in the online environment is much easier to do than in any other media environment (Dreze and Hussherr 2003).…”

“…Based on the research conducted by Rodgers and Thorson (2000) and Burns and Lutz (2006) Researchers use these statistics to underscore the ineffectiveness of online advertising (Cho and Cheon 2004).…”

“…Cho and Cheon (2004) suggested that online advertising avoidance could be classified into three types: cognitive, affective, and behavioral avoidance. Among the three types of avoidance, cognitive and affective avoidance are strongly related to the aspects of "attention."…”

“…Many researchers have delved into factors that promote advertising avoidance on the Internet (Cho and Cheon 2004;Edwards, Li and Lee 2002;Ha 1996). Cho and Cheon (2004) pointed out that perceived goal impediment, perceived advertising clutter on the web page, and prior negative experience regarding online advertising are important factors not only reducing attention to advertising, but also facilitating actions to get away from advertising.…”