High-impact ad formats can help draw consumers’ eyes to standard formats for longer with standard display formats shown after high-impact formats being 27 per cent more likely to be looked at than if preceded by another standard display format.

According to a UK study from Inskin Media and Lumen Research, in partnership with Mindshare, users who had been exposed to high-impact formats also looked at subsequent standard display ads for 39 per cent longer. Furthermore, the 3,160 eye tracking experiments found that the percentage of those standard display ads looked at for one second or longer increased by 140 per cent.

Lumen’s own data shows that only 12 per cent of display ads ever get looked at – only four per cent being looked at for one second or more. This is important because longer visual engagement is linked to increased brand recall. 50 per cent of users were able to recall an advertised brand after one to two seconds of visual engagement compared to 35 per cent after between zero and one second.

“There is an ever-increasing amount of evidence that links visual attention to relevant business KPIs, from brand metrics to sales,” said Dominic Tillson, head of insight at Inskin Media. “We have long known that certain high-impact formats can perform very well on critical measures like attention, but until now we didn’t know how they can be used strategically to make standard ads work harder for brand advertisers. This study is a big step in making this a reality.”

Heather Williams, account director at Mindshare, added: “This piece of research has important implications for optimising digital impression distribution. These learnings have the potential to inform planning and buying strategies that will help realise maximum value and impact for our clients’ ad campaigns.”