1 Banner Ads Hinder Visual Search and Are Forgotten Moira Burke 1, Nicholas Gorman 2, Erik Nilsen 2, and Anthony Hornof 1 1 University of Oregon and 2 Lewis & Clark College

2 Banners still popular, getting larger

3

4

5

6 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

7 Search task Search for linked news headlines. Analogous to:

8 Search task, cont’d Our search area:

9 Search task cont’d Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues

10 Search task cont’d Two kinds searches: literal and semantic precues blank animated static Three kinds of banners

11 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

12 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 block 12 headline locations x 3 banner types + 5 practice

13 Literal precue

14 Literal search

15 Literal search

16 Literal search

17 Semantic precue

18 Semantic search

19 Semantic search

20 Surprise! A memory test Did you see this banner? Yes / No 60 banners 40 appeared, 20 didn’t Half animated, half static Told some banners were from experiment; others were not

21 Surprise! A memory test

22 Results: Search Time Animated and static were 7% slower than blank (literal condition) Banner TypeMean Search Time (ms) Blank2040 Static2169 Animated2193 Literal precue Banner TypeMean Search Time (ms) Blank6065 Static6210 Animated6110 Semantic precue Significant difference p<.005 Not significant, but similar trend

23 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

24 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 banners d' n.s. different than zero for animated Bottom line: Animated ads harder to recall

25 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