The Role of Emotional Information in Banner Blindness

Abstract

Modern theories in affective science postulate that emotional stimuli can affect subject’s attention. Emotional stimuli can guide and capture visual attention, which may be related to evolutional importance of quick reactions for emotional objects in the real life. The study examined the influence of valence and arousal of advertisement on the banner blindness phenomenon—ignoring the advertisement or interface details similar to it on the website. In two experiments participants were asked to find the information on the website, where different banners were placed. In the first experiment banners had the same valence, but different arousal. In the second experiment, the banners had different valence, but equal arousal. Contrary to the classical studies in affective science, we found that banners with neutral valence were recognized better as compared to negative and positive ones. The results are discussed in terms of user experience contributing to banner blindness occurrence.

Consumer environment stimulation: Are consumers aware of manipulation?

“…A website that we admire will feel like a neutral website, where it doesn't look as flashy and eye-catching as what the actual website looks like. This is in line with journals that analyze studies on customer behavior when visiting a website, by presenting a neutral website as a manipulative website, and the real website as a pleasant website (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2021;Hassanein and Head, 2007;Thielsch et al, 2019). Non-Spotify users that take part in this experiment are assumed to have never accessed, seen, or utilized Spotify prior to taking part in this experiment.…”

Does banner advertising still capture attention? An eye-tracking study

“…Indeed, several studies have addressed these and similar types of banners (Drèze and Hussherr, 2003; Hamborg et al , 2012; Im et al , 2021; Köster et al , 2015; Kuisma et al , 2010; Li et al , 2016; Liu et al , 2019; Resnick and Albert, 2014). Over time, consumers learned to associate these traditional locations with advertising spots; this association contributes to banner blindness (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022). Consequently, in an effort to bring back consumers’ attention to banner ads, marketers moved the ads from their rather isolated places to the main content Web page area.…”

“…When navigating a news website, users mostly encounter textual information. Text processing requires the engagement of cognitive processes, which implies top-down attention in the case of news reading (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022). Because banner ads differ from textual news, they tend to be unnoticed by users engaged in news reading (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022).…”

“…Text processing requires the engagement of cognitive processes, which implies top-down attention in the case of news reading (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022). Because banner ads differ from textual news, they tend to be unnoticed by users engaged in news reading (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022). Similarly, in devices with larger screens compared to mobile screens, users can easily avoid viewing ads (Schmidt and Maier, 2022) by directing attention to goal-relevant content (Duff and Faber, 2011), which refers to cognitive avoidance (Cho and Cheon, 2004).…”

“…Moreover, consumers already associate traditional spots (i.e. the top and lateral of a Web page) with advertisements that do not align with their search-oriented goal tasks, leading to banner blindness (Sapronov and Gorbunova, 2022). Hence, hoping to cancel out this conscious avoidance of ads, companies embed banners in the website content.…”