Placeholder Miscommunication Prevention

Question

I've been doing some research into text input placeholders, and came across this: Pardot User Guide: Placeholders are not Substitutes for Labels.

What struck my interest was:

Data suggests that some web users think that form fields with placeholders are already filled in and may skip over them.

My question; is there an effective method of using placeholders to reduce the possibility of confusion that the placeholder text is some kind of auto-filled input?

Some examples:

Personally, I would suggest the ex. John since it has the highest contrast to an actual input.

Answer 1

The most effective placeholder text I've seen is on the Polar sign up form.

The placeholder text is an explanation of why the field is there or what the requirements for the field are.

I can think of a couple reasons for this:

1. Most people already know what a "First Name" is without you giving them an example.
2. We don't expect to see full sentences in these fields, so it's more clear that this is placeholder text and not values already entered.