Behavioral Research in Advertising

Why test ads when many are measurable in real time? Not all ads are digital, and not all are performance-driven; some focus on brand building, prioritizing attention over clicks. Performance marketing revolutionized real-time optimization, yet online brand-building campaigns and traditional mediums still pose measurement challenges. In brand-building ads, the emphasis shifts from click-through rates (CTRs) to engagement and attention. In this space, Attention is a king!

RealEye offers an extensive collection of tools tailored for in-depth advertisement analysis, allowing brands to conduct detailed evaluations of their ad content, including video ads, as well as their strategic positioning.
This platform not only enables a thorough assessment of how each advertisement performs, from the visual impact of video commercials to the effectiveness of their placement in various contexts, but also provides robust tools for testing brand awareness. By tracking viewer engagement and recall, RealEye helps in measuring how effectively an ad establishes and reinforces brand identity and messaging. Utilizing RealEye's capabilities, brands can fine-tune their advertising strategies for optimal engagement and impact, ensuring that their campaigns not only captivate but also resonate with their target audience.

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ad engagement insights

Evaluating Advertising Content

Evaluate your advertising effectiveness using eye-tracking and attention tracking, online.
You can define specific "areas of interest" within the ads to identify which parts capture the most and quickest attention, as well as those that are often ignored. This precise analysis helps you understand the dynamics of viewer engagement, providing important information needed to optimize your ad content to ensure key elements are visible and engaging with your audience.
You can easily create A/B tests and see which creatives are worth publishing to maximize your ad's effectiveness.
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attention measurements

Testing Video Advertisements

RealEye's Video Testing functionality delivers in-depth analysis for your video advertisements and product placements.
It enables precise evaluation of how effectively your products capture audience attention in videos or films. You can use Areas of Interest (AOI) tool to gain eye-tracking data like time to notice or time spent and  understand if viewers are giving focused attention to specific elements (focal attention) or just a cursory glance (ambient).
Additionally, RealEye's capability to identify facial muscle movements offers insights into emotional responses: joy and surprise.
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for testing the ads surroundings

Testing context, placements, format and creative in digital space

In this scenario, eye-tracking technology is employed to evaluate of different aspects of an add on a website. This approach focuses on understanding the level and type of attention (whether ambient or focal) that different ad spots attract from visitors.
The technology measures essential engagement metrics, such as the speed at which ads are noticed and the duration of viewer attention. This analysis helps in identifying the most attention-grabbing positions for ads on the website. The insights gained from this testing enable strategic enhancements to the advertisement layout, aiming to increase user interaction and improve overall ad performance.

attention measurements

OOH or Digital OOH adtesting

Compared to other types of ads, OOH or DOOH (digital out of home advertisements) are the hardest to test and measure. Happily you may use RealEye for that task and see how your billboard/ad performs.
Recreating reality for the test purposes wouldn't make any sense and would be too expensive. In such situations marketers make assumptions and simplifications. So instead of doing live test on a billboard or digital screen on the street they could employ webcam eye tracking to complete this task. By showing panelists the image or a video from a city they compare how different ads perform and whether they are visible to the crowd.
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You can also connect with any survey tool or panel

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Features for Ads Testing:

  • image/svg+xml
    Online eye-tracking
    Webcam online eye tracking is an innovative method that predicts a human eye gaze point using only webcams as data collectors. Read more about this feature...
  • image/svg+xml
    Attention & Emotions
    Attention is a cognitive process that tells us about somebody’s concentration and ability to actively process specific information. Facial Coding allows you to track the emotions on the participants' faces.  Read more about this...
  • image/svg+xml
    Analysis Dashboard
    It is divided into three main sections, which are crucial while running any research: setting up the study, fielding study with the data, and last but not least, data analysis. Read more about this feature...
  • image/svg+xml
    Online Surveys
    Choose from various questions and build surveys that will enable you to collect and analyze the data on an individual and aggregated level.  Read more about this feature...

Attention measurement with eye-tracking & K-coefficient - explained

There were many attempts to create a dynamic visual attention indicator. Finally a group of scientists from SWPS and Clemson University (who we had the pleasure to meet and work with) succeeded in creating a K-coefficient. This parameter uses eye movement parameters (fixation duration and saccade amplitude) to define the path of attention dynamic of an examined person.

Interviewing Krzysztof Krejtz

In eye-tracking research, we can distinguish two general types of visual attention: ambient and focal. Ambient attention indicates a scanning pattern over stimuli (typical for the early stages of scene perception), characterized by short duration fixations followed by long saccades. On the other hand, longer fixations followed by shorter saccades indicate focal attention. The more focal processing of the stimuli, the deeper attention is given, which can mean that someone is actively processing the information.

Read more...

"It’s been a pleasure working with RealEye. Their customer service is prompt, valuable, and always friendly. The quick turnarounds on custom development requests are the most impressive. The RealEye team delivers great tailored solutions. Thank you for being a wonderful partner!"

Sam Albert
Chief Digital Officer

"I'm really impressed with what Adam has created with RealEye. It's astounding how easy and fast it is to track and report on eye movement for a page or design."

David Darmanin
CEO, hotjar.com

"Webcam-based eye-tracking has vast potential within market research and RealEye made a great effort customizing their solutions to our needs. We succeeded in having live online interviews with eye-tracking included and we look forward to build on this pilot study to take further advantage of this solution in future research."

Stefan Papadakis
Insight Consultant, IPSOS

Frequently Asked Questions

What types of advertising materials can be tested using RealEye?

Anything that is visible and may be displayed on computer/ smartphone screen: videos, static and dynamics ads creatives, billboards, ATL, Point of Sales (POS) marketing, placement in the web, product placement in movies/ series; even billboards were tested with RE (see https://www.realeye.io/blog/post/eye-tracking-for-billboards)
Radio or podcast advertisements cannot be tested with RealEye, however we’ve seen researchers testing how study participants' eyes react to hearing different voice recordings.

Is RealEye suitable for both online and offline advertising testing?

Yes. Although not everything may be transferred to digital form 1:1 most of the ads may be shown in a digital form.
Example: Billboards that are 100% offline and may be tested in at least 2 different ways:
- you may see how panelists react to creatives (whether they look at the logo, people on the billboard, slogans or features of the product) but also
- you may show a video or a picture of the street where the billboard is placed and see if your panelists actually notice the billboard and it’s message.

How does RealEye measure attention?

In the RealEye dashboard, you'll find a metric Attention. It refers to K-Coefficient - scientific measure to quantify people's attention based on study participants' eyes movements.
- If there are long fixations followed by short saccadic eye jumps it means the attention is focal (putting it in simpler words: when someone is looking at one point he/she is thinking what he/she sees).
- If there are short fixations followed by long saccadic eye jumps it means the attention is ambient (putting it in simpler words: when someone is looking all arround on different things and he/her eyes keep jumping then he/she is not thinking about what they see).
To learn more about k-coefficient read our blog: https://www.realeye.io/blog/143-attention-measurements-k-coefficient
An alternative way of measuring attention is by measuring what ratio of viewers actually have seen the ad and for how long.

Can I test ads on Amazon, Youtube, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook with RealEye?

Yes. Although no one (except those companies) may test anything directly on their websites there are a couple of ways RealEye is used to test ads and product placements on those services. 
They include among others testing:
- clickable mockups that are visual representations of those services
- html websites that are copies of those services
Reach out to us on [email protected] and we'll be happy to help you figure out

Is it possible to conduct A/B testing for advertising with RealEye?

Yes. RealEye has been designed and is developed in such a way to enable researchers to do A/B testing.
This includes ex. randomizations, showing one stimuli out of many, allowing the researcher to decide which stimuli/questions to show to a given panelists etc.

What level of support and training does RealEye offer?

Level of support and training depends on the license that you have or plan to buy.
Ex. If you have Standard license, we'll answer your questions on the chat, through email as well as during an optional monthly call.
That said, please bear in mind that we're not a market research agency and we'll help you with the platform and setting up the study, but the methodology and hypothesis for testing are on you.
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