the eyes have it
New research has shown that readers of newspapers demonstrate higher levels of attention to adverts than viewers of television advertising.
The technique of eye tracking allows for the measurement of time spent looking at advertisements and also follows how the eye scans the page. In the study, the faster eye movements were seen with readers of news print. This indicates high attention processing for newspapers in comparison with television viewers.
Advertisements in newspapers gained up to seven times the attention of the TV advertisements in the study.
Respondents were selected at random and were unaware that they were participating in a media test. They were told that they were participating in a pharmacological study on eye behaviour and movement. The respondents were exposed to real media – that days edition of the Sun or the Times. The TV programme used for the test was a popular one with broad appeal – a 25 minute episode of Frasier with 3 advert breaks and a total of 15 adverts. A total of 17 respondents participated in the study.
The key findings were:
- Faster eye movements when looking at newsprint indicate high attention processing
- Newspaper adverts gained up to seven times the attention of the TV adverts in the research
- Newspaper advertisement had up to 3.75 the dwell time that TV adverts had
- Full pages and DPS formats were read more than broken space in editorial
- The positioning of brand identity or the key selling message as close as possible to the expected 'path of gaze' had clear benefits in that there was greater potential for the reader to be drawn to the advert.
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