Effective Online Banners: 5 Psychological Techniques to Grab Attention

Online banners have a tough time. On average, only 9% of all online advertisements are viewed for more than a second, according to large-scale Eye Tracking research by Lumen on more than 15,000 online ads.

At the same time, there is undeniably great marketing potential hidden in online advertisements. They can be game changers in marketing, both in terms of direct clicks and conversions and in brand-related effects on brand awareness and preference.

The effectiveness of a campaign does not solely depend on the amount of attention it grabs – but also on the quality of that attention. After all, not all impressions are equal. Something that grabs everyone's attention but fails to convert it into sales or brand effects only results in empty clicks. 

The attention and processing of online advertisements happen rapidly and largely unconsciously. Traditional inquiries therefore provide little insight into what drives the success of online banners. Neuromarketing research uses Eye Tracking and brain activity (measured with EEG) to measure the prominence and attention value of online advertisements. Thanks to this method, we are learning more and more about the factors that make banners successful. In this blog, we share 5 practical techniques that you can immediately apply in your own online campaigns.

1. Faces and Gaze Directions

Few things grab our attention as firmly as a face. Our brain even has areas entirely specialised in facial processing. Evolutionarily, this is well explained: the information from a face contains much crucial information that helped our ancestors, who lived in small social groups, survive.

Today, this results in banners with faces having an average attention advantage. The eye will automatically be drawn to the banner, but that is not necessarily enough to generate more impact: the gaze direction also counts.

Mind the Gaze Direction

An important piece of information we extract from faces is where someone is looking. Our eyes automatically follow the gaze direction of others. Handy, because it helps us pick up what is interesting or where danger lurks with minimal cognitive effort.

For banners, this means it is beneficial to align the gaze direction of a face with the most important advertisement elements. This can be the headline or call to action (for action-oriented campaigns) or the logo or positioning (for brand-oriented campaigns). By aligning these elements, you also make the advertisement easier to process, resulting in more positive emotion.

Be cautious with gaze directions that lead attention outside the advertisement area. In this way, faces can work strongly counterproductively because the initial attention the face attracted flows right out of the advertisement.

Objects Have Faces Too

Not only human faces direct attention; the orientation of objects also appears to have an influence. Look, for example, at the advertisements with an open laptop below. Clever designers have the open side of the laptop point towards the important advertisement elements, while less thoughtful designs let the attention ebb away here as well.

2. Design for Mental Simulation

Did you know that when you see a football, the neural activity of a kicking movement actually becomes active in your motor cortex? The reason is mental simulation: when we see an object, we simulate in our head to a greater or lesser extent how it is to use that object. 

Mental simulation is beneficial for online advertisers because people who see your advertisement will already experience the product a little bit. This makes the product more attractive and increases the chance of conversion.

You can further stimulate the extent to which our brain performs mental simulation with smart design techniques. You can immediately apply the following techniques:

• First-person perspective: Use photography from the viewer's perspective (see McDonald’s example)
• Movement: Use photography with a suggestion of movement, or animate the product in the banner
• Recognisability: Depict the product as we are used to in daily life. Show a cup of soup with the spoon on the right and not on the left (so that with a majority of right-handers, mental simulation is greatest)

3. What is the Visitor's Mindset?

Although as advertisers we would like there to be something like a ‘perfect banner’, the reality is unfortunately more nuanced. A banner that scores highly on one website might completely miss the mark on another site. This is not only due to design aspects (such as the extent to which the banner contrasts with the surrounding website) and relevant fit with the content (a sports brand advertising on a sports website). An equally important factor turns out to be the user's mindset.

Goal-oriented or for Distraction?

Roughly speaking, there are two reasons why someone is on a website: you are looking for something (goal-oriented) or you are clicking around hoping to stumble upon fun content (distraction). This difference in mindset turns out to be a crucial factor in which message resonates best.

Someone using the website for distraction will resonate most with emotionally driven advertisements (with people, positive copywriting, etc). For the goal-oriented user, this is completely the opposite; this person will resonate more with rationally driven ads (product focus, copywriting focused on benefits). 

This brand-new finding comes from a large-scale study on attention for online advertisements that Unravel conducted together with DPG Media in 2021. The practical implications of this simple principle are significant. Firstly, you can tailor the advertisement message to the mindset that dominates the advertising medium. This is because sites differ in the extent to which they are used goal-oriented or for distraction. For example, AD is often used goal-oriented (where rationally driven ads score well) while Libelle is used more for distraction (where emotionally driven ads perform better). 

Besides differences at the platform level, it is possible to classify users at an individual level as ‘goal-oriented’ or ‘distraction-oriented’ based on their behaviour. With this input, the most suitable ads for the individual can then be served.

4. Be Cautious with Hard Action-oriented Elements

We often get the question whether it is useful to show hard action elements in a banner, such as direct call-to-actions (“order now”) and promo elements (“Now 50% off!”). The effectiveness of such elements was tested in the large attention study conducted by DPG Media and Unravel Research in 2021.

When you compare action-oriented campaigns with branding-oriented campaigns, action-oriented campaigns appear to grab attention slightly less; on average, they are viewed 20% less often. The reason behind this is probably the banner blindness phenomenon. The action elements more clearly reveal that something is a banner, making it easier to ignore. However, once attention is paid to the expression, it is of great value, as shown by brain activity. Especially when the message is functionally driven.

Action Banners Work Well with Functional Communication

We compared the performance of action-oriented banners with an emotional approach (people central in visual and copy) and a functional approach (product central in visual and copy). What did we find? Action-oriented banners evoke extra desire in the brain when combined with functional communication. For brand-oriented banners, it was exactly the opposite: they performed better with an emotional approach. 

This highlights an important practical condition. When the goal of your advertising campaign is to generate more clicks and conversions, it is effective to focus them on the benefits of your product or service. No emotional vistas, but direct concrete benefits.

5. Is Animation Always Effective? 

Animation is a popular tool for online advertisers to grab more attention. This form of rich media content uses movement, such as animated texts and pulsating buttons. 

When we look at the Eye Tracking data of prominence, it seems cautiously in favour of these moving banners, albeit marginally. On average, moving banners stand out 6.5% better than their static counterparts. However, when we look at what happens in the brain while viewing the banner, we arrive at a more nuanced conclusion. The effectiveness of animation depends on the goal of your campaign.

Brand-oriented Campaigns Perform Better with Static Banners

Brand-oriented campaigns (compared to action-oriented campaigns) evoke the highest degree of desire in the brain when shown with static banners. Animated texts and buttons temper this positive emotion, possibly because these techniques are associated with a commercial intent.

Action-oriented Campaigns Perform Better with Animated Banners

Campaigns with a direct call-to-action or promotion benefit from animated texts and buttons. Neural desire increases as a result of the animation.