Integrating text and pictorial information: Eye movements when looking at print advertisements.

TLDR

The study highlights implications for integrating pictorial and textual information in print advertisements and for applied research and ad development. Viewers were shown print ads while their eye movements were recorded; half were instructed to focus on car ads and the other half on skin‑care ads. Viewers spent more time on text, made more fixations on text, but had longer fixations and saccades on pictures; they did not alternate between text and picture but generally read large print, then small print, then the picture.

Abstract

Viewers looked at print advertisements as their eye movements were recorded. Half of them were told to pay special attention to car ads, and the other half were told to pay special attention to skin-care ads. Viewers tended to spend more time looking at the text than the picture part of the ad, though they did spend more time looking at the type of ad they were instructed to pay attention to. Fixation durations and saccade lengths were both longer on the picture part of the ad than the text, but more fixations were made on the text regions. Viewers did not alternate fixations between the text and picture part of the ad, but they tended to read the large print, then the smaller print, and then they looked at the picture (although some viewers did an initial cursory scan of the picture). Implications for (a) how viewers integrate pictorial and textual information and (b) applied research and advertisement development are discussed.