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Banner Ads Hinder Visual Search and Are Forgotten

Moira Burke1, Nicholas Gorman2,

Erik Nilsen2, and Anthony Hornof1

1University of Oregon and 2Lewis & Clark College

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Banners still popular, getting larger

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Banners still popular, getting larger

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Banners still popular, getting larger

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Banners still popular, getting larger

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Do banners impact search?

• “Banner blindness”: Only 20% of web users noticed any banners (Benway, 1998)

• "An animation that appears alongside primary content will disrupt your readers' concentration and keep them from the objective of your site." (Web Style Guide, 1999)

• Who is correct?

• We investigate visual search speed and participants’ recall of banners

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Search taskSearch for linked news headlines. Analogous to:

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Search task, cont’dOur search area:

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Search task cont’d

• Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues

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Search task cont’d

• Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues

blank

animated

static

• Three kinds of banners

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• Two banner placements:

– top of search area– covering a random line in search area

Search task cont’d

• Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues

• Three kinds of banners

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• Two banner placements:

– top of search area– covering a random line in search area

Search task cont’d

• Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues

• Three kinds of banners

• 2 blocks (by precue type)41 trials per block12 headline locations x 3 banner types + 5 practice

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Literal precue

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Literal search

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Literal search

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Literal search

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Semantic precue

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Semantic search

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Semantic search

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Surprise! A memory test

• Did you see this banner? Yes / No

• 60 banners40 appeared, 20 didn’tHalf animated, half static

• Told some banners were from experiment; others were not

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Surprise! A memory test

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Results: Search TimeAnimated and static were 7% slower than blank (literal condition)

Banner Type Mean Search Time (ms)Blank 2040Static 2169Animated 2193

Literal precue

Banner Type Mean Search Time (ms)Blank 6065Static 6210Animated 6110

Semantic precue

Significant difference p<.005

Not significant, but similar trend

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Results: Memory

• Overall, memory quite poor (Bayles, CHI 2002)

• 20.1% hit rate (100% is perfect)

• 20.2% false alarm rate (0% is perfect)

• Difficulty of search didn’t affect recall

• Top banners remembered significantly better than randomly-placed banners

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Results: Memory cont’d

• Signal Detection Theory to correct for guessing strategies of participants

• Transform hit and false alarm rates into single measure of memory strength: d'

• d' positive for static bannersd' n.s. different than zero for animated

• Bottom line: Animated ads harder to recall

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Summary and future work

Who was right?

• Banner ads distract

• But people don’t remember them

• Animation makes recall even worse

• Currently analyzing eye-tracking data

• So far: People don’t look at banners, except by accident