Investigating the Influence of Ads on User Search Performance, Behaviour, and Experience during Information Seeking

Abstract

The phenomenon of banner blindness explains that users can mentally ignore online advertisements (ads). However, eye-tracking studies have shown that users still fixate on ads, and even without direct gaze, ads still fall within a user's peripheral vision, which may negatively overload cognition. It is therefore unknown how blind, banner blindness, truly is, and what other effect ads may have on user's information seeking. To address this gap, a withinsubjects design experiment was conducted with 37 participants who performed search tasks from the TREC 2017 Common Core News Collection, where 3 search tasks contained various types of ads, and one search task had no ads. Although our results showed that on average, participants retrieved similar amounts of relevant documents regardless of whether ads were present or absent, participants took significantly longer achieving this performance when ads were present. Furthermore, when ads were absent, participants reported less frustration, and not only believed they learned more, but a post-task recall test showed that participants actually did learn up to 38% more. Consequently, our findings suggest that banner blindness is more costly than just mere annoyance, and that the influence of ads on user's information retrieval recall may extend current theories of visual crowding. CCS CONCEPTS• Information systems → Users and interactive retrieval; • Human-centered computing → HCI design and evaluation methods.

The Role of Emotional Information in Banner Blindness

“…Moreover, some authors argue that distractors such as annoying ads can reduce user’s subjective satisfaction and lead to site abandonment ( Goldstein et al, 2015 ). The advertisement’s presence is also linked to less user satisfaction with search results and higher level of frustration while using the website ( Foulds et al, 2021 ).…”

Is googling risky? A study on risk perception and experiences of adverse consequences in web search

“…Chiravirakul and Payne (2014) found that time pressure aggravates the difficulty of selecting search results from a large result set. As Foulds et al (2021) show, recognizing relevant search results is more difficult for users if advertisements are present because they increase the number of items on a SERP. Advertisements on the SERP also have the potential to lead users to websites they do not want to access because many users lack the ability to reliably distinguish sponsored from organic results (Lewandowski et al, 2018; Schultheiß & Lewandowski, 2021a).…”

Detecting Deceptive Dark-Pattern Web Advertisements for Blind Screen-Reader Users

“…Dark patternsinsidious design choices and techniques that manipulate user behavior or deceive usershave become increasingly widespread across various websites [35][36][37][38][39]. In recent years, the prevalence of deceptive practices and dark patterns on numerous digital platforms, including social media, travel websites, e-commerce, apps, and mobile activities, has led to concerns about user trust and autonomy [40][41][42][43][44]. These patterns leverage cognitive biases, create a sense of urgency, or hide essential information, leading users to unintended actions or decisions [35].…”