<P> Furthermore, banner avoidance on the internet is caused by the mistaken belief by advertisers that the internet is a means for a person to accomplish their tasks and not primarily the means to enjoy oneself . The lack of understanding of the human behavior which includes the goals or purposes of being online, the need to navigate the site without being distracted by irrelevant and annoying ads and attitude towards advertisement can cause banners to be ineffective, thereby causing banner blindness . Banner placements, pre-existing attitudes towards the brand, their relevance to the website and to the user's task are important aspects that affect the effectiveness of banner ads and have a major role in generating clicks . </P> <P> This, however, does not mean that banner ads do not have any impact on viewers . Website viewers may not be consciously aware of an ad, but it does have an unconscious influence on their behavior . A banner's content impacts both businesses and visitors of the site . A website's usability could be improved by reducing frustration and errors by effectively addressing users' needs and targeting them with ads that are relevant to their interests . Also, the placement of ads is of the essence in it capturing attention . Use of native advertisements and social media is being encouraged in order to avoid banner blindness because of its ability to engage with viewers . </P> <P> A possible explanation for the banner blindness phenomenon may be the way users interact with websites . Users tend to either search for specific information or browse aimlessly from one page to the next, according to the cognitive schemata that they have constructed for different web tasks . When searching for specific information on a website, users focus only on the parts of the page where they assume the relevant information will be, e.g. small text and hyperlinks . A new methodological view has been taken into account, in a particular study conducted by Hervet et al., focusing on whether participants actually paid attention to the ads and on the relationship between their gaze behavior and their memories of these ads, investigating via eye - tracking analysis whether internet users avoid looking at ads inserted on a non-search website, and whether they retain ad content in memory . The study found that most participants fixated ads at least once during their website visit . When a viewer is working on a task, ads may cause a disturbance, eventually leading to ad avoidance . If a user wants to find something on the web page and ads disrupt or delay his search, he will try to avoid the source of interference . </P> <P> Increase in the number of advertisements is one of the main reasons for the trend in declining viewer receptiveness towards internet ads . There exists a direct correlation between number of ads on a webpage and "ad clutter," the perception that the website hosts too many ads . Number of banner ads, text ads, popup ads, links, and user annoyance as a result of seeing too many ads all contribute to this clutter and a perception of the Internet as a platform solely for advertising . An important determinant in users' viewing behavior is visual attention, which is defined as a cognitive process measured through fixations, i.e. stable gazes with a minimum threshold . As users can concentrate on only one stimulus at a time, having too many objects in their field of vision causes them to lose focus . This contributes to behaviors such as ad avoidance or banner blindness . </P>

What is the most crucial element of advertising to breakthrough banner blindness