Consumers Like Large, Fixed Online Ads

New research from the Online Publishers Association suggests that consumers are likely to engage and relate to ad units that are large and remain fixed on the page. While that may seem intuitively true - if your eye can't avoid it of course it will register - OPA engaged the services of Innerscope Research to measure viewers' reactions using biometric marketers. In the study, called "Biometric Evaluation: Assessing the Effectiveness of the OPA Ad Unit," 90% of participants notice OPA Ad Units in the first 10 seconds of being on a webpage and users who fixated on the OPA Ad Units during the same timeframe were as emotionally engaged with the advertising as with the rest of the webpage content.

The study further revealed that 67% of users returned to look at the OPA Ad Units after spending time elsewhere on the webpage. Innerscope's technology allowed OPA to better understand the impact of the OPA Ad Units, which the Pushdown, the Fixed Panel and the XXL Box. "A key question for advertisers is whether consumers notice their ad and if they engage with it; through Innerscope's biometric technology we found that OPA Ad Units are having significant impact in driving emotional engagement," said Pam Horan, President of the OPA. "We can actually see a participants' eye tracking activity as they view the ad, read the content, and then return to the ad. The findings show that OPA Ad Units are not only drawing attention back to the advertising, but are also generating significant interest and therefore are a very effective platform for brand marketers to deliver messages."

The study also found that:

• 96% of participants pay attention to OPA Ad Units while naturally surfing;

• 73% of users who fixated on units in the first 10 seconds displayed a stronger emotional response to the advertising than to the rest of the webpage;

• On average it takes 0.6 seconds to fixate on an OPA Ad Unit;

• On average, participants fixate over 15 times on OPA Ad Units 40% of these fixations occur after the first 10 seconds of being on a webpage.

Brands Outpace Celebrities on Social Media

Twitter or Facebook users are more likely to follow brands than celebrities, a new report has found. The study, from the Internet Research Bureau research company Opinion Matters and social media agency RMM, revealed that 20.3% of social networkers are following brands, whereas only 13.4% follow celebrities. The survey of over 1,000 internet users found that the most popular uses of social networking sites are for viewing photographs of friends (55.9%) and planning social arrangements or getting information about events (34.8%). Generally, engagement with brands was not found to be a mainstream activity amongst social networkers.