6/27/2014. Much of Marketing is Visual. The Eyes Have It: Evaluating the Effectiveness Advertising. Eye-Tracking for Visual Marketing

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1 The Eyes Have It: Evaluating the Effectiveness Advertising Michel Wedel Robert H. Smith School of Business Johan Arndt Conference Oslo, Norway 3 May 23 Much of Marketing is Visual Visual stimuli carry brand equity Human information processing is largely visual Companies make large investments in visual marketing of their products and services Commercial visual clutter is extreme Do visual marketing stimuli capture and retain attention sufficiently? Eye-Tracking for Visual Marketing Has a long history in Marketing starting with Nixon in 924 Is used by companies such as P&G, IBM, Kraft Foods, Microsoft, Pepsico, Pfizer, and Google Low cost sophisticated eye-tracking devices enable: High level of recording detail Large samples of subjects and ads Results challenge received knowledge and have specific actionable implications for practice Here, I will give an overview of the state-of-the-art in eye tracking, and some of the key results of my own research Thanks to: Anocha Aribarg, Rajeev Batra, Ralf van der Lans, Rik Pieters, Edward Rosbergen, Thales Teixeira, Luk Warlop, Jie Zhang.

2 Why Do We Move Our Eyes? Eye movements: Saccades Fixations We know much of what happens in the brain as well Eye Movements for a Mercedes Ad One person fixation Twenty persons saccade Eye Tracking Equipment TOBII SYSTEM X SMI MOBILE SYSTEM 2

3 Eye Tracking in 96 Cool Graphs: The Effect of Gaze Direction on Attention to an Advertisement But, the enthusiasm for these great graphs is waning: companies want metrics and predictions! Beyond the Cool Graphs Eye Movements Person Factors Visual-Spatial Attention Down Stream Communication Effects Stimulus Factors Data Theory Models Combining Vision, Attention, Bayesian Statistics and Eye Movement Research 3

4 We Have Shown: Consumers differ in their attention to elements of advertising (Rosbergen, Pieters & Wedel JCR 97); There are systematic scan-paths of eye movements that are stable across repeated exposures (Pieters, Rosbergen & Wedel JMR 98); There is support for two states of attention, localization and identification, which rapidly alternate during exposures to advertising (Liechty, Pieters & Wedel PM4); Attention affects memory, with the strongest effects of attention to the brand element (Wedel & Pieters MKSC); Memory-based Starch Tests of attention are biased and lead to suboptimal ad design; based on eye-tracking bias adjustments can be made (Aribarg, Wedel & Pieters JMR9) Gaze-Based Segmentation Reveals Depth of Processing Scanning Segment Initial Attention Segment Sustained Attention Segment Bodytext Headline Headline Headline Packshot Key New Insight: -Segments with different viewing patterns reveal depth of processing of ads Packshot Brand is Central in Attention to Ads Text-size affects attention to the ad as a whole has base attention capture Brand attention transfers to pictorial and text rather than the other way around. Key new insight: No support for received knowledge That larger pictures get more attention, or that pictorial attention transfers to the brand. Picture Brand Text 4

5 Goals Have Rapid Influence on Gaze (4 sec.) Exploration leads to a very similar attention pattern as ad appreciation Body text, pictorial and brand are all more informative when trying to memorize the ad -body text gets more attention when people evaluate the brand or want to learn about the brand Originality Stimulates Attention and Memory Ad originality increases attention to the Brand and Even more so for familiar original ads Ad originality in interaction with ad familiarity enhances memory for the brand Key new insight: i Attention to the brand element promotes memory most Even for garden-variety originality, higher ad originality systematically stimulates attention and promotes brand memory Complexity May Hurt or Help Ads are visually complex when they contain dense perceptual features: feature complexity they have an elaborate creative design: design complexity: Can be achieved through: Quantity, irregularity, it similarity, il it detail of objects, and asymmetry and irregularity of their arrangement Feature complexity hurts attention to the brand element. Design complexity helps attention to the pictorial and ad as a whole. 5

6 ADID 22 Average of Happy TID Zapped Price ADID Average of Surprised Promotion Brand Text Price TID Zapped Promotion Brand Text Feature Ads Far From Optimal Brand Text Discount Price Actual Optimal Current Optimal Reduce pictorial and increase brand and price elements Win-Win for manufacturers and retailers More gaze improves sales! TV Ads Improved by Brand Pulsing Focal attention Branding Ad execution Product characteristics Viewer demographics Original Ad no Zap=47.% Joint effect size Time frame Optimized Ad no Zap=4.4% Key new insight: Time frame Short and frequent pulsing of brands is optimal to reduce commercial avoidance through zapping Moment-to-Moment Emotions in TV Commercials Joy Surprise Optimal use of Joy: Increase consistently with ad progression Optimal use of Surprise: Use to recapture dispersed viewers. 6

7 Gist of Typical Ads in a Glance (ms) Most ads don t receive more than a single fixation! Within a single glance, consumers grasp the gist of typical ads from coarse information Typicality is an effective strategy to break through the clutter in a single glance New Developments In 5- years eye tracking will be integrated in computers, billboards, kiosks, smart-tvs, and smart-phones, providing: Hands-free access to information Support for common tasks such as driving, flying, shopping, search on web-pages, medical and security X-rays, video surveillance, education and gaming. Gaze-contingent rendering of information, text, product placement, organic and sponsored search results, banner and display ads on web-pages, and interactive billboards Conclusion Visual Aspects are central in marketing communications Eye-tracking is effective for the evaluation of visual marketing effort, because it provides unique data on processing of information on packages, brands, ads and shelves. Eye tracking has already provided a wealth of insights of both academic and practical relevance Some of our other past work is on search on shelves, facial emotional expressions, copycat brands, and decisions on shopping and comparison websites With wide availability of eye tracking data collected through webcams, large amounts of eye tracking data will become available for research in and support for a broad range of tasks 7