The Effect of Information Forms and Floating Advertisements for Visual Search on Web Pages: An Eye-Tracking Study

Users' visual search on a Web page is impacted by information forms, information layout, Internet advertisements (ads for short), etc. Text and picture are two important forms of expressing the information on Web pages, and it is generally through the two forms of title that users can search their desired information. This study investigates the effect of the two basic information forms and floating ads on visual search using eye-tracking. By analyzing the visual search time and pupil diameter, the results show that it is easier to find the picture than the text; whether the target is text or picture, floating ads do not significantly impact people's visual search time, however, it would make people bored.