When we surf the internet, what is called a ‘banner’ frequently appears, a form of online advertisement that usually includes images or animations and whose objective is to capture our attention to attract us to another website where a product or service is offered. However, much to the dismay of marketers, many of these advertisements are known to go unnoticed, unattended.
Sajjacholapunt and Ball, from the University of Central Lancashire, have provided some more insight into the factors that make the mariner pay more attention to banners . In their study published recently in Frontiers in Psychology, they recorded the eye movements of a group of participants in front of a series of banners that were presented either horizontally at the bottom of the screen, or vertically on the right side of the screen. In addition, they presented three different types of advertisements, one without faces, another with the faces of people who were looking directly at the subject of the experiment, and another type in which the face of a person whose gaze was diverted to another direction was presented.
The result of the study showed that when a photo of a person looking directly at us is presented, we essentially focus on the face and stop paying attention to the message or the advertised product. On the contrary, those in which the face appeared with the look turned to one side favored greater attention to the advertisement in general and a better memory of the advertised message or product. This type of findings from Psychology will help to better focus online marketing strategies in the future.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
