Eye Tracking and the Online Publisher’s Association
New news featuring a study involving the Online Publishers Association has been making the rounds as of late, and we’ve seen similar articles in a number of media outlets. The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch recently covered the research, which featured biometrics and eye tracking to observe how consumers engage and interact with advertisements.
The Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) recently released the study that showed the effectiveness of an OPA Ad Unit, which is a little ad featured on web pages in the original tests. For the research, the OPA worked with Innerscope Research, a biometrics company that seeks to create consumer insights based on emotion. The study looked at the effectiveness and impact OPA ad units have as traditional study methods aren’t entirely effective in measuring how a consumer or end user engages with ads.
The OPA hoped that Innerscope’s technology would help them to understand how ad units work and to potentially create a base for advertisers to help them translate brand experiences more efficiently. As we mentioned in a recent article, the study showed that 96% of subjects paid attention to the OPA ad units as they surfed naturally online.
Seventy-three percent of the participants that fixated on ad units within the first 10 seconds of looking at the page had a more robust emotional response for ads than the remainder of the web page. Typically, it takes .6 seconds to fixate on the OPA ad unit, and study participants fixated more than 15 times on OPA ad units. Of the fixations, 40% occurred after the first 10 seconds of landing on the page.
In the study, researchers used OPA member sites like CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Times. There were 9 brand advertisers that took part in the research, including Cadillac, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, Bing, Unilever, and Westin Hotels.
Advertisers want to know if the public sees their ads and if so, how they engage with them. Innerscope’s end of the study was able to show advertisers what was found through the OPA ad units. OPA ad units were shown to have a significant impact on driving emotional engagement, so the article states.
To read more about the study and the brands involved, check out the link below at the Wall Street Journal’s site: