You will obviously want to keep visitors engaged thus keeping your advertisers happy and your income steady. However, plastering your website with ads is definitely not the way to go about it, according to a study conducted by SAY Media and IPG Media Lab.

The findings of the study suggest that publishers are smothering their advertising returns by placing numerous ads on their pages. A clean environment, meaning a page with one brand ad, keeps visitors engaged with an ad for twice as long and drives ad recall higher.

Using a combination of eye-tracking data and survey methods, SAY Media and IPG Media Lab examined the response of 3,200 Internet users to ads published on cluttered and clean web pages. According to the eye-tracking data, all study participants viewed advertisements on clean pages. In contrast, just 76% did so on pages littered with ads from assorted brands. Moreover, ad interaction time for clean environments came in at 6.4 seconds as opposed to 3.2 seconds for pages strewn with ads. Research from comScore shows that visitors spend an average of 40 seconds on a web page, meaning that brands are being forced to smarten up in the advertising department.

A vicious circle seems to have been created and publishers need to break it in order to improve advertising returns. SAY Media president Troy Young noted that low yields are prompting publishers to increase the number of ads on their pages but the resulting clutter drives down viewing time, ultimately impairing results.

The second place is occupied by German Internet users, who spend 25.4% of their shopping budgets online. Between September 2011 and February 2012, European e-sales generated EUR188bn, with the average spend per online shopper amounting to EUR544. Norwegians came on top with an average bill of EUR1,162, while Britons ranked fourth with EUR765, the IAB Europe said.

The industry association polled more than 50,000 Europeans across 28 countries, noting in its report that 96% of Internet users do product research online, 87% shop via the Internet and 19% conduct all their shopping activities online. For 51% of the sample, the Internet was a helpful tool for choosing better products and services, 47% said they were likely to seek additional information about products advertised online and 46% stated that they made frequent visits to the website of their favourite brand.

Among the key findings of the study were the large proportion of Europeans employing at least two devices to access the web and the rise in simultaneous media use.

The IAB Europe established that 426.9m people get online every week, translating into a penetration rate of 65%, and 37% do so by means of more than one device. Almost half of European netizens (48%) watch television while browsing the Internet, suggesting that companies which fail to adapt to evolving media consumption patterns stand little chance, if any, of future success.