The negative impact of visual web advertising content on cognitive process: towards quantitative evaluation

Web user experience is an important relatively new field of study. The impact of marketing content and its visual characteristics on perceived intrusiveness is one sub-field which remains under-explored. Effects such as vividness and intensive call-to-action messages are interrupting the cognitive processes and influence web user attitudes towards online environment. Our research contributes to the field of consumer responses to visual intrusive elements in advertising, using real and synthetic advertising content. The technical and quantitative characteristics considered in the current study include: flickering frequency rate, active area and animations. The results revealed an increased influence of connecting animations with other techniques, and identified its influence on cognitive process. The existence of a threshold of flickering frequency and active area size beyond which the content is perceived as intrusive was confirmed. Finally, we use experimental data to propose an objective metrics to evaluate the intrusiveness level of the elements analyzed. The approach can be used to evaluate the negative effect on web users' cognitive processes by quantifying certain characteristics of the content. Moreover, it can be used as a reference for similar studies or as an aid for the design of visual content intended to attract web user attention.