Customized advertisements on the Web not only attract extra focus, they also remain in our memory longer than impersonal ads. This is the result of a study performed by Professor Kai Kaspar from the Psychology Division of the University of Cologne in collaboration with his colleagues Moritz Köster, Marco Rüth and Dr. Kai-Christoph Hamborg in Osnabrück. Especially, they investigated the gaze behavior of female students on sites.

People who surf the web and shop on the web leave lots of traces of their behavior behind. These data are increasingly becoming used by providers to present ads on their web sites that are intended to meet people's individual interests and preferences. Nonetheless, so far it has been unclear if this form of customized advertising actually attracts people's attention to a higher degree than impersonal ads.

In their study, which was published in the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology, the 4 researchers asked female students to study the present events presented on a news portal. The ads of several firms were also displayed, but the test persons tended not to appear at these ads incredibly a lot – an effect also identified as "banner blindness".

Personalized ads, nevertheless, attracted a great deal additional focus than impersonal ones. Moreover, there was a considerable impact on the memories of the test persons: in a later test, the female students recognized the images and slogans that have been previously integrated into personalized ads significantly more usually than those in impersonal ones. But the personalization of marketing had no effect on the test persons' memories of enterprise logos or the contents of the news they had been viewing.

These combined effects are very relevant for advertisers and site operators. Having said that, internet users should also be a lot more aware of the utilizes to which the traces they leave behind of their on the internet activities can be put.

Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.