Users dislike animated ads since they tend to lose focus on their tasks. But this distraction may increase the attention of some users when they are involved in free browsing tasks. On the other hand, when they are involved in a specific task there is evidence that they not only tend to fail to recall the ads, but the completion time of tasks is increased, along with the perceived workload. Moderate animation has a positive effect on recognition rates and brand attitudes. Rapidly animated banner ads can fail, causing not only lower recognition rates but also more negative attitudes toward the advertiser. In visual search tasks, animated ads did not impact the performance of users but it also did not succeed in capturing more user fixations than static ones. Animations signal the users of the existence of ads and lead to ad avoidance behavior, but after repetitive exposures, they induce positive user attitude through the mere exposure effect.