The Stopping Power of Advertising: Measures and Effects of Visual Complexity

TLDR

Visual complexity is central to capturing consumer attention, yet its effects are debated and objective measures are scarce. The study aims to distinguish two types of visual complexity, separate them from comprehension difficulty, and propose objective measures for each. Visual complexity is defined by feature complexity—dense perceptual features—and design complexity—elaborate creative design. Eye‑tracking of 249 ads revealed that feature complexity reduces brand attention and ad attitude, while design complexity enhances attention to the pictorial and overall ad, improves comprehensibility and ad attitude, and can be directly controlled by advertisers; the proposed measures enable assessment and improvement of ads’ stopping power.

Abstract

Advertising needs to capture consumers’ attention in likable ways, and the visual complexity of advertising plays a central role in this regard. Yet ideas about visual complexity effects conflict, and objective measures of complexity are rare. The authors distinguish two types of visual complexity, differentiate them from the difficulty of comprehending advertising, and propose objective measures for each. Advertisements are visually complex when they contain dense perceptual features (“feature complexity”) and/or when they have an elaborate creative design (“design complexity”). An analysis of 249 advertisements that were tested with eye-tracking shows that, as the authors hypothesize, feature complexity hurts attention to the brand and attitude toward the ad, whereas design complexity helps attention to both the pictorial and the advertisement as a whole, its comprehensibility, and attitude toward the ad. This is important because design complexity is under direct control of the advertiser. The proposed measures can be readily adopted to assess the visual complexity of advertising, and the findings can be used to improve the stopping power of advertisements.