Combining Virtual Reality Advertising and Eye Tracking to Understand Visual Attention: A Pilot Study

This paper aims to design a virtual reality eye tracker for the analysis of dynamic behavior of viewers when watching a virtual reality (VR) commercial advertising. Seven experimental participants were recruited for the pilot study. Experiment contents included a one-minute VR commercial advertising designed with Unity 3D development tool and through integration into eye tracking device of a head-mounted display (HMD), eye movements of participants were recorded. The finding results of the paper showed that: 1) when watching the VR commercial advertising, participants did not put the first sequence of gaze in each dynamic regions of interest (ROIs) in the commercial object; 2) in terms for concentration span sequence of gaze in each dynamic ROIs, if participant gazed the commercial object, more concerns were put and there was longer time for gazing; on the contrary, there was no eye movement information about gazing at the commercial object; 3) when watching the VR commercial advertising, the commercial object did not receive longer total gazing time and numbers of relative concentration gazing of participants spending on all dynamic ROIs. According to experimental results, we concluded that the VR 360-degree VR film affects the expected outcome in the operation of eye tracking technology.