What Attracts People’s Attention in Banner Advertisements? A Study on Banner Advertisements using a Human Attention Model

Banner advertisements are integral components of businesses’ marketing plans due to their large potential reach and historical effectiveness. In order to fully maximize the impact of banner advertisements, several critical factors of what induces human attention in banner advertisements are investigated, with elements such as image complexity, image attributes, and categories. Subsequently, the question arises, which image complexity, image attributes, and categories best grab human attention in banner advertisements? In this study, we collected 600 banner advertisements with different image complexities, color schemes and products, identified and annotated the objects in each sample, and, using a human attention model, evaluated the attention score of the objects that induce the highest attention. The first experiment shows that within a banner advertisement, objects in low complexity images generally attract more attention than objects in high complexity images. The second experiment shows that for banner advertisements placed side-by-side competing for attention, the colored images attract more attention.