Browsers vs Seekers

I have been thinking lately about reader behaviour online. The thinking comes as a result of more and more people dismissing display advertising and requesting special projects. Now the trick with special projects is that unless you advertise them, they have absolutely no reach (come on let's face it, the Twitter community may be big but it can only do this much and forwarding it to your friends simply does not work) so maybe a solution is to work more coherently on making the display more effective.

The argument goes, however, that ignoring advertising online is much easier and much likely to happen since the advertising is played alongside the thing you are interested in and tends to move and flickr - most of the times pointlessly.

But this is where something interesting happens: when navigating, one can be searching for something specific or simply browsing. I have found that I am most likely to click on banners when I am checking out Facebook, because my commitment to the content there is minimal - I am not particularly keen to read all updates and am just skimming so my degree of openness to advertising content is higher. By contrast, when I read articles in news sites, I seldom, if ever, click on advertising because I am not interested in being moved away from the content I am reading.

So, one challenge maybe, would be for media to identify content with high seeker potential - meaning content that you must read consistently and not leave. This would probably be less likely to yield high CTR but would function well for branding and awareness. On the other hand, high-degree browsing content, meaning content you simply skim to get to something that might interest you, might work to attract more engaging display.
Just a thought.