Eye Tracking: Simple and Rational Is Better In Advertising
Several Eye Tracking Update posts have mentioned saccades and fixations, two terms that essentially make up the nuts and bolts of eye tracking. It was Louis Émile Javal, a French ophthalmologist that first noticed humans’ tendency to dart their eyes around when reading, stopping and starting as they scan across a sentence on a page. Fixations and saccades show up in a recent study in which researchers attempted to understand how effective emotionally oriented advertisements are to viewers.
In order for advertising to work, consumers have to first notice it. Something that grabs attention is, of course, more effective when it comes to convincing the consumer they need to buy something. But an incredible amount of advertising is very simple, over the top, and emotionally heavy. It might be assumed that this would tug at the ole heartstrings, so to speak, thus provoking the viewer to act on a visceral response. But that, according to researchers, isn’t necessarily the case. In fact, the researchers found that when the message is actually more rational, it achieves a higher level of engagement. When rational conscious processing comes into play, humans are engaged intellectually, and that seems to warrant more attention than, say, the easy way out: swelling strings played over a person stricken with cancer, or perhaps a starving child on television with a narrator’s voice asking for donations.
It is no surprise that this method is less effective. Emotional music and images are easily blocked and tend to be tuned out because the viewer knows they are being sold something or manipulated into thinking they need something. The article, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Advertising Research, highlights the study, which used eye tracking to reach its conclusions supporting the use of rationally engaging advertisements. The study shows the respondents – in this case 31 University students and staff – show slightly more “fixations per second” when shown more “rational” commercials. As the early scientist, Javal, pointed out back in the 1800s, eyes don’t scan smoothly over stimulus, but rather pause on the various things being processed. Using a lightweight eye tracking camera mounted to the head of each participant, researchers were able to observe people watching TV programs and advertisements intermixed. As it turns out, less information-rich advertising requires less attention to process, whereas information-rich advertising is likely to get more active attention. Emotion-oriented advertising is easier to process, resulting in decreased need engage with it.
It’s another case of eye tracking research being applied the world of advertising and marketing, and it goes to show that simple… is better.