Evaluating the Unaccounted Cost of Distraction of Display Ads to the Users
Kamal Kishore Jain, Mary P. Czerwinski, Yang Song, Li-wei He · 2010
Displaying advertisements is the primary business model for most of the content and services on the web. The ads provide free web services to a user in return for an advertising distraction cost. Understanding this distraction cost of ads may be essential in order to further improve and streamline the user-experience and business model of the web. In this paper, we address the issue of evaluating the cost of distraction from display ads to users. Our study is divided into two stages, the latter stage being the primary focus of the paper. In the first stage, we summarize the results of an extensive user-survey. This survey provided a qualitative understanding of the user pain points with today‟s ads and their delivery. The survey pointed to us that it is not the ads themselves, but their effect on webpage navigation, which is considered a major inconvenience