I ran across an article at WebProNews today that examines research done by Media-Screen that says advertising on smaller sites can't be ignored by advertisers anymore.  The article talks specifically about the findings of the "Netpop™ | Response" study that looked at the way Internet users respond to and react with advertising online.  It took a little digging, but I was able to find the original press release from Media-Screen that detailed the results of the study.  And although the full report on the study isn't publicly available, the press release had some good information that needs to be shared.

The study found a lot of information that, to be honest, should have been common sense to advertisers.  In particular, the Netpop™ | Response study suggests that consumers are more responsive to advertising on their favorite websites that deal with topics of interest to them.  On larger sites, a lot of people ignore advertising because they figure it won't be relevant.  But on smaller sites, the advertising can actually act more as a feature and less as a distraction.

The study asked respondents to enter in their top three favorite websites.  Media-Screen collected almost 18,000 websites from the the survey and analyzed them.  Over 60% of the sites mentioned by survey respondents received less than a million visitors (that's nearly 11,000 of the sites).  They found that the smaller sites were more likely to show relevant advertising and more likely to entice customers into making purchases of the advertised products.  According to the study, 42% of websites with less than one million visitors were likely to display relevant advertising.  That compares with 39% of the sites with a million or more visitors.

I've long said that advertising on small, niche sites is one of the major misses of online marketers.  Niche sites draw in customers that are interested in the specific topic being covered by the site.  Instead of general-purpose advertising on general-purpose sites, advertisers could target specific customers that they know are interested in the topic of the niche site.  I mean, you don't go to cookingwithbloodsausage.com unless you enjoy cooking with blood sausage, right?  Who's going to be more interested in your cook book on blood sausage?  The random visitor to Amazon.com or the visitor specifically looking for information on the topic at cookingwithbloodsausage.com?