The use of eye tracking to measure various aspects of the marketing communication program is nothing new. Companies have used this methodology to determine which labels are most likely to catch the consumer’s eye in a supermarket and to track how effective various elements of an advertisement are in catching viewers’ attention. The technique has also been used to test television commercials, by watching where the viewer’s eyes focus and for how long. Now eye-tracking methodology is being expanded to help companies in new ways. One of these is determining the effectiveness of online advertising. As you would expect, advertisers want to know if their Internet advertising is being noticed.
One measure, of course, is whether or not the viewer clicks on the ad.But this tells only that the ad has been seen (or accidentally clicked on!) but not the impact of various types of ads or the effect of where the ads are placed. As noted by Rice University professor David Lane, who studies the effectiveness of banner ads, “People don’t know how effective ads are, and there are so many different ways of advertising. They don’t know which ones work best.”
Other university researchers have also measured effectiveness through eye tracking. Stanford University researchers used this method to see where people focused while reading online news sites and where and how long they looked at the ads. At the University of Wales in the United Kingdom, ads were sandwiched between flashes of puppies and hairy spiders in an attempt to see what was noticed most. University researchers are not the only ones interested in determining advertising effectiveness through eye tracking. AT&T is just one of the companies that employ this methodology to determine the impact of their website designs. By tracking the eyes of viewers for 30 minutes, the company was able to document viewing patterns and to uncover exactly what people looked at as they visit home pages. The results were then used to design AT&T’s sites to be more user-friendly and to be more effective than competitors’ sites. IBM is also using this method to watch what users look at on the screen.
So what do researchers find out by watching our eyes? The Rice study showed that many Internet users largely ignore banner ads. A study at the University of Indiana, which used electrodes to measure heart rate and GSR activity along with eye tracking, produced results that were consistent with those at Rice. The study further indicated that static banner ads elicited no reactions in the additional physiological measures and animated ads elicited a mild response, with both types being less effective than television advertising. The Stanford study showed that viewers’ eyes first went to the text on news sites, ignoring graphics and ads, but they later viewed as many as 45 percent of the banners—though only for an average of one second. In essence, the studies concluded that banner ads aren’t very effective.
As a result, like AT&T, companies are exploring new ways to make online advertising effective. New forms of ads, new placements, and other creative ideas are being explored to try to catch your eye.Maybe if they just had more creative ads?
