How many ads would you say you have seen on the Internet in the past 20 minutes? And how many of those ads do you remember?

Depending on what kind of sites you frequent, you could be viewing anywhere from 10 to 100 ads in that time period (my estimate, based on my experience). That’s a lot. Especially considering we spend hours and hours on the Internet every day. And even when we aren’t on the computer we are surrounded by ads. On TV, on billboards, and now even on our cell phones. You show me a physical or virtual setting and I will show you where there can be ads. (I wrote about this trend in a previous post:Starbucks cups sponsored by American Express).

From a consumer’s perspective its just annoying. We don’t want to see ads everywhere we look. But traditionally this idea of throwing up ads wherever they fit has worked. Even if we think ads are annoying, if we see an ad for a product or service that we need, we usually pay attention..

To be continued at   Desensitized consumers = devalued advertising | Opinion @ Large.