Amazing research that will be very interesting to those involved with marketing and advertising, as well as website design. Using eye-tracking technology, many things we already knew are confirmed, like text ads doing better than graphical ads, but lots of great stuff are here for the taking. Be sure to check out the "heatmaps" that show exactly where participants of this study were looking at mocked-up websites.
quote: What We Saw Through Their Eyes
By Steve Outing and Laura Ruel
What do people see when they view a news website or multimedia feature? Is it what the site's designers expect? ... Perhaps not. The Eyetrack III study literally looked through the eyes of 46 people to learn how they see online news. In this overview article, we review the study's key findings
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• People avoid looking directly at most ads
• Visual breaks serve as barriers to seeing ads
• Ads that blend into the look and feel of the page perform better -- especially text ads
• Size matters; "half-page" ads perform well
• Ads inset within article text get seen more
• Mouseover-expand ad viewed more
• Animation helps somewhat, but results are mixed
• Ad real estate diminishes the further it is away from top left headline
• Ad creative quality, content affect viewing behavior
• Small pop-ups are quickly viewed, then closed or hidden
