Personally relevant online advertisements: Effects of demographic targeting on visual attention and brand evaluation

Global investments in online advertising rise quickly but internet users often avoid looking at ads due to established banner blindness. Demographic targeting is expected to overcome this tendency by attracting users’ attention to more self-relevant ad content. However, little is known about the effect of demographically targeted versus non-targeted ads on users’ actual attention allocation during exposure to webpages. The present study aimed to further fill this empirical gap by clarifying whether demographic targeting attracts visual attention and to exploratively examine whether it also affects brand attitude and website evaluation, as suggested by previous studies. Eye tracking data revealed that demographic targeting can have medium- to large-sized effects on several eye movement parameters when internet users are in a free-viewing mode. In contrast, demographic targeting did not influence brand attitude and website evaluation. We conclude that attention for personally relevant advertisement can be strong. However, attention, although being a necessary condition for subsequent judgment formation according to the model of human information processing, is not sufficient to elicit positive effects at the level of subjective judgments.