Analysis of affective and gender factors in image comprehension of visual advertisement

Abstract

Advertisement is an integral part of the daily life in modern society. Nevertheless, the advertising industry often ignores the fact that people might understand ads differently and behave accordingly. Eye movements, fixation times, gaze landing sites and areas of interest in visual images are known as good predictors of customer behavior. Here we perform eye tracking of several versions (neutral, positively and negatively valence) of popular ads and analyze the dependency of eye fixation times on affective and gender factors. The results show that there are statistically significant differences on how affectively charged images are perceived, but no statistically significant differences between genders have been found when shorter fixations representing unconscious processing of visual information are analyzed.