As the digital landscape becomes increasingly populated with marketers scrambling to catch the eyes of viewers across multiple platforms, the challenge of engaging and keeping the viewers’ attention is a constant battle. To make marketing campaigns more consumer-friendly, publishers and marketers alike are turning to the latest in web design technology.

In an April 2015 study conducted by the digital advertising company Undertone, “Consumer Attention in Digital: Why Attention Matters Most in 2015,” over 700 marketing, publishing, and agency professionals in several industries offered insights into what they were doing to gain the attention of consumers and to garner responses. Almost all of the respondents pointed towards incorporating web design technologies that reach seamlessly across all devices.

Responsive web design, including infinite scroll and in-line advertising, is the most popular format, with almost 80 percent employing it; that number is expected to increase over the coming year. Infinite scroll, while still in its infancy, has caught the attention of more than a quarter of marketers and publishers, and signs point to its use more than doubling over the next twelve months.

Those answering the survey offered that the value in responsive web design rested in improved viewer interest, experience, and engagement. In addition, over 80 percent of publishers said because these evolving web designs helped them address the demand for improved advertising platforms, the appetite for them has increased as well. As such, spending on these formats is expected to increase at the expense of standard display ads.

Among other cited benefits to responsive web design:

• Ad options that are more site-design friendly (83 percent);
• Greater creativity (74 percent);
• Improved confidence in ad viewability (74 percent);
• Improved ability to cut through ad clutter (66 percent); and
• Ability to reach more viewers (60 percent).

This research corroborates other studies in which marketers have identified adopting responsive web design as a marketing imperative.

References:

eMarketer. “Attention Strapped Consumers Drive Web Design Evolution”; July 13, 2015.

Undertone. “Consumer Attention in Digital: Why Attention Matters Most in 2015”; July 2015.