Perspectives of Young Digital Natives on Digital Marketing: Exploring Annoyance and Effectiveness with Eye-Tracking Analysis

Stefanos Balaskas, Georgia Kotsari and Maria Rigou ()
Additional contact information
Stefanos Balaskas: Department of Management Science and Technology, School of Economics and Business, University of Patras, 26334 Patras, Greece
Georgia Kotsari: Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, Polytechnic School, University of Patras, Rio, 26500 Patras, Greece
Maria Rigou: Department of Management Science and Technology, School of Economics and Business, University of Patras, 26334 Patras, Greece

Future Internet, 2024, vol. 16, issue 4, 1-18

Abstract: Currently, there are a wide range of approaches to deploying digital ads, with advanced technologies now being harnessed to craft advertising that is engaging and even tailored to personal interests and preferences, yet potentially distracting and irritating. This research seeks to evaluate contemporary digital advertising methods by assessing how annoying they are to users, particularly when they distract users from intended tasks or cause delays in regular online activities. To pursue this, an eye-tracking study was conducted, with 51 participants navigating a specially designed website featuring seven distinct types of advertisements without a specific content to avoid the effect of ad content on the collected data. Participants were asked to execute specific information-seeking tasks during the experiment and afterwards to report if they recalled seeing each ad and the degree of annoyance by each ad type. Ad effectiveness is assessed by eye-tracking metrics (time to first fixation, average fixation duration, dwell time, fixation count, and revisit count) depicting how appealing an ad is as a marketing stimulus. Findings indicated that pop-ups, ads with content reorganization, and non-skippable videos ranked as the most annoying forms of advertising. Conversely, in-content ads without content reorganization, banners, and right rail ads were indicated as less intrusive options, seeming to strike a balance between effectiveness and user acceptance.

Keywords: eye-tracking; online ads; annoyance; user testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/16/4/125/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-5903/16/4/125/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jftint:v:16:y:2024:i:4:p:125-:d:1371579

Access Statistics for this article

Future Internet is currently edited by Ms. Grace You

More articles in Future Internet from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().