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July 13, 2009
Eye Tracking Study Shows Sponsored Ads Attract Social Media Searchers
A new eye tracking study from Oneupweb shows that search is a core element of social media sites. They did studies on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, arguably three of the most popular social networking sites right now.
The study is especially relevant when you consider that search queries on Facebook grew 5% in May of 2009.
Search marketers will want to take note: Despite the prevailing idea that social media ads are worthless, the Oneupweb study found that 65% of participants engaged with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search.
Participants in the study were asked to navigate the social networks as they normally would. Check out where the red spots are, indicating heavy attention areas. The search box on all three sites is red. (Note that the images for Facebook and Twitter show live feed pages, which users see once they've already signed in.)
Facebook - search box is in the top right corner
Twitter - search box is on the right sidebar, a quarter of the way down.
YouTube - search box is at the top, just left of center
The participants were then asked to conduct some search tasks. Twitter was not included since the objective was to compare organic to sponsored ads and Twitter does not have sponsored ads (hello, monetization opportunity!).
Here's what happened when they arrived on search results for Pepsi on Facebook. Notice that the first result and the sponsored ad gets attention while the other results are left in the dust.
Here's a search for Pepsi on YouTube. Notice how the top 6 organic results get attention while the first sponsored ad gets attention, with the second sponsored ad sneaking in there as well.
Oneupweb also determined areas of interest (AOI) within the eye tracking data.
Notice how the sponsored ad gets the primary AOI in the search for Pepsi on both Facebook and YouTube.
What do you think of this eye tracking study? Let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment.
Posted by Nathania Johnson on July 13, 2009 1:49 PM
Comments
Graham Jones - Internet Psychologist July 13, 2009 4:54 PM
Actually, a previous study I covered last year showed that social media users don't mind ads, they just don't always find them relevant. The relevancy factor is the one that needs to be resolved. There's clearly an ability to attract eyeballs, it's simply the message that transpires once the attention is grabbed.
Because sites like Facebook do a great job of attracting eyeballs to areas that non-ad content is also displayed, I'm not surprised to learn that people are prone to look at the sponsored ads.
However, many of us can attest to finding ads that simply don't meet our needs or desires. That's the true problem in social media, but one I think will be resolved.
Nathania Johnson July 13, 2009 5:02 PM
For those of you interested, here's the direct link to the COMPLETE study http://www.oneupweb.com/landing/09_search_is_going_social
As for the findings of the study, participants had no coaching. The eye tracking data speaks for itself. Oneupweb's motive was to demonstrate real user behavior - not to sell Facebook ads(as you infer Graham). Twitter was included and they sell no advertising at this time.
Lisa Wehr, Oneupweb CEO July 13, 2009 9:24 PM
Interesting results, but I don't think this eye tracking study shows what you suggest it does. The heatmaps shown here are typical for all web sites (indeed the same as printed documents). Eye tracking studies consistently show a sort of letter F, which is what is seen in this study. Equally, the hottest parts of the map are for images and headlines - just as in printed documents.
Far from showing us that people engage with advertising it shows that people are merely checking out pictures and headings to find out how to process the page. Once they have done that they actually disengage from the advertising once they have sorted out what it is.
Several studies - plus, for instance, Facebook's advertising income stream - shows that online advertising is getting low levels of engagement and those levels are constantly decreasing.
Eye tracking studies are always interesting, but it is the interpretation of them that is important and I fear that this set of studies have been misinterpreted to suggest that social networking advertising has value. Hardly surprising when you consider the company that produced them is a digital marketing agency that helps companies place advertising online...!