Fully nine in ten consumers notice digital ads in the first 10 seconds of visiting a webpage, and in that period, consumers who fixate on such ads are as emotionally engaged with ads as they are with webpage content, according to research from the Online Publishers Association (OPA), which explores the effectiveness of OPA Ad Units.
Within the first 10 seconds of the page loading, consumers spend one-third of their time on average fixated on OPA Ad Units,* the OPA's proprietary ad structure. During that period, such ads resonate emotionally with visitors at the same level as the other elements on the webpage.
Roughly 40% of consumers fixate on ads after the first 10 seconds of visiting a webpage, and interestingly, 73% of such visitors generate a stronger emotional response to ads than to the rest of the webpage.
In addition, 67% of consumers who notice ads in the first 10 seconds return to look at those ads after spending time elsewhere on the webpage.
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Below, other findings from the study titled Biometric Evaluation: Assessing the Effectiveness of the OPA Ad Unit," by the OPA and Innerscope Research, which uses eye tracking technologies to draw emotion-based consumer insights:
- 96% of visitors pay attention to OPA Ad Units during a natural online surfing experience.
- It takes 0.6 seconds on average for readers to fixate on the OPA Ad Unit.
- Visitors fixate on such ads units 15 times on average.
*OPA Ad Units were introduced in July 2009 to provide a platform for marketers to deliver their brand experiences as opposed to encouraging consumers to click. They include Pushdown, the Fixed Panel, and the XXL Box.
About the data: The data was compiled by Innerscope Research from 600 ad exposures among 100 adult participants during the last week of August 2010. Study participants were directed to the homepages of three OPA member sites: CNN.com, MSNBC.com and NYTimes.com, and exposed to a total of nine target OPA Ad Units, including Bing, Cleveland Clinic, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, Unilever, Westin, and three unidentified brands. Particular article pages were recreated for the purposes of this study so that an OPA Ad Unit could be randomly presented on the targeted article pages.
