Lumen Research announces world-first in online eye-tracking
In what is being described as a world-first, eye-tracking specialist Lumen Research is to begin measuring the effectiveness of online display ads – by tracking the subconscious path of human eyeballs – and setting up a large scale home panel to boot.
Speaking at Mediatel’s Future of Media Research conference on Tuesday (10 March), Lumen founder Mike Follett described what could be a giant leap for media research as the company looks to transform our understanding of online ad engagement.
Already able to measure the effectiveness of print advertisements in national newspapers, Lumen’s advanced eye-tracking technology will enter a number of homes this year to study what people look at when they’re online, what they ignore and whether this has any impact on future purchase behaviour.
“Websites are much harder to look at because of dynamic targeting,” said Follett, “and if you think attention to print advertising is problematic, online advertising is even more so.
“We’re very good at ignoring ads in newspapers; but how good are we at ignoring those ads online?”
The current average click-through rate is recorded at 0.01%, meaning that just one in 10,000 people clicks on an online ad. However, Follett said that measuring in this way is comparable to judging the success of TV by clicking on the red button, “which would be an absurd and stupid way of looking at TV.”
According to Follett, eye-tracking and attention-tracking holds the key to measuring the real value of online ads; and, in a beta testing phase from May, and properly in August, Lumen will introduce a 500-strong home panel equipped with eye-tracking cameras for every family member in an effort to understand the online behaviour of consumers.
“Families will be able to turn these cameras on for an hour a day, and from that we will be able to get the world’s most robust and largest eye-tracking panel in existence,” explained Follett, adding that Lumen will also track consumers’ offline purchasing behaviour.
“This will be tremendously important for us in understanding the real display value of display ads,” he said, noting that the research will measure everything: from VOD and static ads, to pre-roll, sponsorship, rich media and native.
But Lumen doesn’t plan to stop following consumers in the home. Follett revealed that the company will be working with companies such as Tesco to gather loyalty card data in an effort to track offline purchase behaviour as well – and that six months after the study they will do large scale post-exposure tests to give real insight into the consumer purchase journey.
“The data that we’re using at the moment to base very important decisions on isn’t working – it’s not very robust,” said Follett.
“We can either pretend that it doesn’t matter or we can find out the truth; ask difficult questions and take time and effort to work out what the actual data is rather than what people want the data to be.”
The research could also help value the best websites for consumer engagement, and hopes to understand the creative aspects of individual campaigns to help optimise ROI – both in terms of attention and sales.
Currently funded by a government grant until the pot runs out later this year, Follett would like everyone to get involved to push the methodology and the technology to its limits.
“We want to produce data that is of use to the market,” he said. “We’re hungry to understand what the market wants.”