Online newspapers and ad banners: an eye tracking study on the effects of congruity

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to study the possible influence of congruity on the way ad banners are watched and remembered in online newspapers. Design/methodology/approach -The effects of the thematic connection between banner subject and article content are examined at the level of gaze behaviour using eye tracking technology, while questionnaires are exploited to assess both free and helped recall. Two "kinds of reading" are also considered, namely "imposed" (where the tester has to read a specific article) and "free" (where the tester can choose the article's topic from a set). Findings -Results indicate that congruity matters for the way banners are looked at, although it seems to have a limited influence on memory. Moreover, the kind of reading is significant in a few cases. Practical implications -The design of ad banners for web content is very critical, due to the so-called "banner blindness" phenomenon. At the same time, ad banners are crucial for online newspapers, which rely on them as the main source of revenues. Understanding the potential of congruity is therefore an essential point. Originality/value -Results to date obtained from previous research about congruity between online content and ad banners are contrasting, and further investigations are thus necessary. Moreover, in the context of online newspapers, congruity has been considered in extremely few cases and, to the best of the authors' knowledge, without using eye tracking technology. The outcomes of this study can be exploited to drive further research in the field.

Considered Factors of Online News Based on Respondents’ Eye Activity Using Eye-Tracker Analysis

“…The BAI questionnaire assesses the level of respondents' anxiety using a scale based on the respondents' answers to the existing 20 questions. There are four scales in BAI, namely low (0-7), medium (8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15), high (16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25), and severe . In this experiment, the BAI questionnaire was filled out by respondents after reading the three news articles provided in the context of real news content, and this can provoke impulses and respondents' memories to trigger anxiety.…”

“…Through eye-tracking, this research can understand and investigate cognitive processes that occur in visual activities, such as attention, selection, and discrimination [20]. This research focuses more on eye gaze because it acts as a basis to analyze user activities and performances due to its direct relationship with the concept of "attention" [21]. Automatic gaze tracking enables several applications in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and human behavior analysis [22].…”

Eye-tracking in Marketing Research

“…For example, Porta, Ravarelli and Spaghi (2013) checked the impact of the congruity between the ad banner subject and webpage content on the perception and remembering of banners in online newspapers. Eye-tracker was also used to measure the number of fixations in the banner area, the total duration of the fixation, the average duration of fixation and the time of the first fixation (Porta, Ravarelli, Spaghi, 2013). In the studies in the area of online advertising, the tracking of eye movements may be helpful to measure the phenomenon of banner blindness.…”

Banner positioning in the masthead area of online newspapers

“…Investigations have also been conducted on the possible congruity between banner subject and web page content (e.g. [9] and [14]). With different focuses, Holmqvist et al [10] examined the way online newspapers are read, while Ferreira et al [7] considered the impact of verbal emotional cues to capture attention on advertising regions in news portals.…”