Scrolling advertisements - do consumers want them?

When ANZ launched its new look website last month we couldn’t help but notice the prominent rotating home page advertisements including a numbered interface.

ANZ Personal homepage via kwout

Bank marketers often butt heads over real estate on the home page and which current promotion deserves prominence.

This is one way of making the peace, ensuring more campaigns get a run in a highly visible position on the website.

The Commonwealth Bank has also adopted this approach on its website, albeit in a less prominent position.

Commonwealth Bank Group - Home Page via kwout

Even Google seems to have embraced it, launching scrolling advertisements for Adsense publishers earlier this year.

But are marketers guilty of being inward looking with this approach? Will consumers be more or less likely to click on display advertisements when they have more than one to choose from?

I’d like to see the metrics for site visitors actually clicking on the scrolling arrows to find out if this is about increasing relevance for consumers or just gambling on a slightly higher click-through rate.

Then again, when the outdoor advertisers launched scrolling bus stop ads in 2002 some said they would cause traffic accidents and result in death. Six years on we’re all used to rotating outdoor advertisements, so perhaps the scrolling online ad could be here to stay.