Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Eye tracking and Google Adwords

This eye tracking technology is just fantastic. There are lots of companies selling this service and for good reason (just look at the sponsored links when searching for eye tracking). I wish I could afford this for the Google Challenge (i.e. for optimizing the landing page)!

It is, on the other hand, quite worrying if you are using AdWords. Take a look at the video below (from Google's Official blog). It seems that nobody looks at the right column of advertisements. I bet we can catch some of it with our peripheral vision, though. But I guess the lesson here is to bid high in AdWords because you want to be on top of the organic search. That's where the gold is. 



I found yet another interesting study by Think Eyetracking suggesting that users are getting used to Google results. The image below is a heat map of eye movements on a Google result. Users are getting smarter and more efficient with time. How does it affect the internet marketers? We have less and less time to catch the user's attention. And again: bid high on AdWords! 
Any other suggestion?



Comments (13)

Loading... Logging you in...
  • Logged in as
the best alternative is to find a sponsor - fixed revenue - and never mention the eye tracking stuff..hehe
Wow - that is really fascinating stuff Marcos. What will the eye map look in another 2 years time - one tiny hot spot top left?

Alternatively - will the Google ads develop from their rather basic 3 line form, with extra payment of course, to encourage people to look around the page?
Very cool.

I think search has a rosy future even if people look further to the left as time goes on.

When I walk down the street to enjoy the walk, I'm looking at the trees, the sky, the architecture, etc. and an eye tracker will pick this up.

But when I'm walking down the street looking for a snack, my eyes are in the shop windows and on signs and packaging.

In the years to come, people will learn to look at search results for relevant ads just as they used to use the yellow pages to find relevant ads.

As time marches on, people may look even further to the left during the 99% of the time they're not on the market for something. But they might look more directly at the right side during that 1% of time when they are on the market. And that's not a bad outcome ...
Fascinating! I wonder what would be the result of that study if it was run in countries were people read from the right to the left. Would one see additional attention paid to the ads on the right ?
This technology has really come on in leaps and bounds, an old friend of mine did his Phd on stuff like this a decade ago and some of the equipment you had to wear looked painful. That headset looks almost normal. I wonder if they've done PET scanning of the brain and typical internet usage?
wow! what is next... thought tracking perhaps... but great insight for advertisment
One thing that they could do to attract more attention to the eyes would be using images instead of only text. Anybody has an opinion if you think Google will allow that some day or this would be against their designing policy?
1 reply · active 857 weeks ago
they add images to maps and videos.
it might be an interesting idea to allow advertisers to add a small image to the search results, but right now it would slow the page loading very much... maybe for affiliate websites?
have you noticed that on 2008 page there are no ads on the right? maybe that's why noone looked there?

fascinating stuff!
I guess it is a question of trying to get attention, we tend to switch channels during commercials, similiarly we will stop looking at these ads during a search. I liked the suggestion of using images.
I have to say that every once in a while, I do take a closer look at the right side ads (may not always click though). However, my behaviour to do so is prompted by something catching the attention of my peripheral vision (ie, my 'exact' search terms appearing in the AdText). Most of the time, my focus goes directly to the left-hand organic search results. So perhaps the eye tracker isn't taking peripheral vision and subconscious absorption into account?
As a Google PPC ninja once told me, it is important to constantly split-test new ads so that messaging is consistently being refined in a competitive marketplace. That happens on at least two levels: 1) The ads themselves, inside Adwords. It has easy split testing for ads and reports optimal performance. 2) On your landing page itself. That's where a lot of people miss the boat on conversions. They blame the ads but don't split test elements or versions of their landing pages. There are lots of ways to do this, but it's kind of technical and as a business owner I couldn't really be bothered with learning the details, but I can refer you to Simon. Call him - 240-455-3886.
Not only your contents but also the way you present the issue is awesome. Particularly this one is articulating the sense of the discussion. Your word power is awesome. Keep it up.
search engine marketing company in india

Post a new comment

Comments by