In search of cognitively relevant Internet banners

Abstract

Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986/95) claims that human beings are biologically geared to obtaining the most relevant information from in-coming stimuli. The main claim of this essay is that Internet users also carry out this cognitive task when evaluating the relevance of the banners that they come across while surfing the net. All the banners are processed against the users (highly personal) background context of beliefs, expectations, interest, etc., but on paper we can hypothesise that banners which are connected with the users current task at hand are more likely to be clicked on, while other, unconnected banners are bound to be dismissed and be left unprocessed.