Burke, Hornof, Nilsen, and Gorman (2005) test how banner ads change visual search, perceived workload, and memory.
Flashing text banners raise perceived workload. Both animated and static commercial banners slow visual search. Eye tracking shows people rarely look directly at banners. Recall is low, and animated banners are harder to remember than static banners that otherwise look the same.
Method
Two experiments. The first times search for short words with two banners on screen and collects NASA Task Load Index ratings for animated commercial banners, static commercial banners, cyan banners with flashing text, and blank banners. The second times search through news headlines, for exact matches and for matches that require semantic interpretation, and adds eye tracking plus a memory test.
Main findings
- Flashing text feels like work. Participants report higher workload under flashing text banners.
- Commercial banners slow the search. Both animated and static commercial banners decrease visual search speed. People rarely look directly at the banners.
- Motion is harder to remember. Banner recall is low. Animated banners are more difficult to remember than static look-alikes.
Why this is in the Darwin index
This is the cost-of-blindness paper beside Drèze and Hussherr (2003) and Lee and Ahn (2012). People can be slowed by a banner they almost never look at, and animation does not buy memory.
Source of record: doi:10.1145/1121112.1121116.