Liane Dietrich, managing director of LinkShare, the affiliate network which conducted the research, said:

“Less than 10 per cent of our respondents are interacting with adverts across social networking sites…Online users are information shoppers – they are looking for buyer reviews – so adverts need relay more information to cater for this need”.

This serves as a good reminder to all that at its heart the internet is a service led business. The most successful sites are those that are consistently providing useful information to their customers.

This obviously is easier said than done and even Google can sometimes get it wrong. Recently I’ve been exploring their Ad-sense channel via YouTube and came across this particularly illuminating comment.

“Hey Google instead of these ads for your Google products how about you give instruction instead. That’s what people search YouTube for, not to see an ad”.

Wouldn’t it be great if more people actually searched for ads. Perhaps a good lesson for us all, remember advertising needs to be useful!

Here’s the full explanation as featured on the Mixx Sifter page and what’s really in it for the user:

“What is this Mixx Sifter anyways? Well, glad you asked. It’s a cool new space that lets you vote on the creatives you’d like to see on Mixx. The creatives that come out on top will be given prominent placement throughout the site. What’s in it for you? Well, the thrill of seeing your favorite creative featured, plus Karma Points. You’ll also be entered to win a special prize each time you vote. To get started you only need to opt in, and then give us a bit of information—and we do not share individual information with our advertisers.”

Certainly an interesting twist. Dab Leahul at Brand Republic, writing for their Digital Blogger blog, reported on the news of Mixx Sifter, and had this to say about it:

“It’s a good idea, appealing to both advertisers and users, and even the uninitiated — as a frequent Digg user, I’m suffering from Mixx-remorse, as the number of hours spent on Digg could have meant exciting prizes and notoriety on Mixx.”

What do you reckon?

(via Brand Republic)