Online marketing content 'must be relevant'

Businesses publishing marketing content online must make sure that it is relevant and targeted to increase its effectiveness, according to the results of a new poll.

Conducted by Yahoo!, the survey of UK consumers revealed that the majority of Britons feel overwhelmed by the large amounts of online information they are required to process every day.

Nearly nine in ten respondents said that they unconsciously filtered out irrelevant content as a result of this, while 62 per cent claimed that having to deal with copious amounts of data had a detrimental effect on their lives, reports UTalkMarketing.

Kristof Fahy, vice-president of marketing for Yahoo! Europe, explained that the survey indicated marketers must create targeted, engaging campaigns to attract the time and attention of overloaded consumers.

"It's no longer a case of just getting your voice heard; it's about having a dialogue with the individual while understanding and responding to their needs," he remarked.

A recent Nielsen Online study suggested that older web users are now more accustomed to seeing high numbers of online ads than their younger counterparts.

It also indicated that niche websites are more likely to have high levels of ad clutter than other sites.