This graphic is both interesting and saddening. Take a look at the webpage on the left side first, then look over to the right for breakdown.
It’s interesting that Baby Boomers (or at least those in the study) have not yet adapted their internet-looking behavior to disregard common places for ads. This brings up the question of whether this is because it becomes harder to adapt as one ages (which would be sad and scary), or because older people simply don’t spend as much time reading online, and therefore haven’t had enough stimuli to form the avoidance behavior yet.
It’s sad because it points out another cost of advertising that I hadn’t consciously thought of before – reduced screen real-estate. Despite my screens continuing to get larger over time, the screen-space keep feeling smaller! This is likely one reason why – I never look to the side-bars anymore.
Which can be really annoying sometimes. On more than one occasion on reddit I was told the answer to my question was “in the sidebar”. And I was like “WTF? What sidebar? I looked all over the… ooooooohhh… right, THAT thing!” The sidebar had disappeared from my attention so thoroughly that I forgot it was a place I could look to if I was looking for information on-screen.
This is a damned tragedy. If I could pay $10-$15/month to a micro-transaction service that split that among all the websites I visited, and get that screen real-estate back, I’d gladly do so. Unfortunately the only way to make that work is if everyone else online also does so, and that’s a coordination problem we can’t tackle (yet?). /sigh. You win this round, Moloch!