Gerry McGovern has written a short piece on how web users tend to ignore everything that is not directly related to the task at hand. People visit web sites with a particular task in mind and it is difficult to try to distract them from this task by giving them information or marketing guff not directly related to this task. Hence, traditional advertising methods don't have as much resonance on the web, grab-lines and blurbs have much less impact and in fact can annoy people. As McGovern says, user recall is diminished greatly when information is presented on a screen.
I think this is useful for those trying to design websites to recruit students. Although the traditional way to attract them would be to tell them about all the wonderul reasons they should choose your University, all the attractions of the city in which it resides etc. The reality is though that they are after a certain set of information to complete a set of tasks. The best advertisement you can give them is to enable them to find information easily and not bother them with fluff.
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