Department of Marketing Using Eye-Tracking to Measure Digital Advertising Jeanine Minnocci, Mentor Dr. José Mendoza Department of Marketing Abstract Results Conclusion In digital advertising, companies might design their piece without thorough consideration of what areas of interest attract the consumers’ attention. This research measures the preferences of digital advertising by measuring students’ eye movements. This methodological contribution consists of recruiting students at Sacred Heart University and exposing them to pieces of digital advertising from the 2016 Webby Awards. By using eye-tracking technology, students’ areas of interest will be measured using metrics such as, point of gaze; saccade order; heat maps; opacity maps; and areas of interest (AOIs). The participants will look at each digital ad on a monitor for several seconds while the eye-tracking device records metrics. A desktop base eye-tracking tool will be used alongside an online-base survey tool. This is a non-intrusive research method of understanding which areas of a digital ad are relevant to participants. The practical contribution of this research is that digital agencies and marketers can optimize the design, look, and feel of their digital advertising by using eye-tracking technologies to measure the consumers’ reactions to these pieces. Attribute Percentage of Participants Layout 45% Images Colors 35% Brand name 20% Concept 30% Participants preferred a unique layout with aesthetically-pleasing images and colors. Based on the heat maps, participants were generally more focused on the images, especially when people were the main attraction, such as the model in the Barneys’ ad. In the Nixon ad, the watches and skateboarder attracted the most attention. Participants preferred the Ditto ad which had a main focus on the model’s jaw and neck area. The layout for this ad was also attention-grabbing, and the dispersed green colors of the heat map illustrate this. The least preferred ad was the Barneys ad. Its heat map shows how participants were not attracted to ad’s layout and focused more of their attention on the model’s face. Based on these results, I can infer that consumers are focused on the images and layouts on advertisements and are not very aware of the text and logos. On the opacity maps, participants did not even acknowledge the logo for the Tens and Ditto ads and barely noticed the logo for Barneys and Nixon. Regarding saccades, participants tend to start gazing the ad from left to right then gaze more towards the areas containing images. For Ditto, the gaze path focused on the large text and photograph of the model. While for Nixon, the participants looked toward the dark drop located towards the center of the ad, then towards the skateboarder. I recommend that digital advertisers use eye-tracking to further develop their advertisements to be more effective and visually-pleasing to consumers. The ultimate goal for retail websites is to generate conversions through purchases, therefore it is logical to design effective ads based on what areas attract consumers’ attention. For further research, a bigger sample size would provide more accurate and reliable results. Objectives To gather data on AOIs on 2016 Webby Nominees and Winner for the Web/Shopping category. To focus on recruiting participants in the target demographic age range of 17-30 years. To experiment using an eye-tracking device to collect data To analyze data using heat maps, gaze plots, and opacity maps. Method An eye tracker by Cool Tool was used and propped on a laptop for respondents to take the questionnaire. The questionnaire shows 4 ads including the home page for the following shopping websites, Nixon, Barneys, Ditto, and Tens. Each ad is shown for 10 seconds and the eye-tracker recalibrates the respondents’ eye movement before each ad. After the participants were asked several questions regarding the ads including, what was their preferred ad, least preferred; rank the following attributes (color, layout, brand name, images, concept) in order of preference for your preferred ad and your least preferred. At the end of the survey, demographic questions were asked including, gender, age, geographic location, education, and ethnicity/race. An incentive was placed in the survey and asked participants to provide their email for a chance to win a Dunkin’ Donuts gift card. I recruited a total of 20 participants for the survey from the university’s campus and local coffee shops.