Banner blindness as the suppression process: No perceptual load effect on web advertising detection

ABSTRACT

The study represents an application of perceptual load theory to the real-world internet users’ behavior and contributes to the dispute whether banner blindness – a tendency to ignore the banners on web pages – is a special case of inattentional blindness or a separate phenomenon. Perceptual load theory claims that processing of task-irrelevant information can be predicted by the level of perceptual load: the subjects in a high load condition are more likely to ignore the distractors, while with a low load, task-irrelevant information is processed. In four experiments, participants were divided into low and high load groups and asked to find items on a shopping website. In the critical trial, an advertising banner appeared. No significant effect of perceptual load on banner blindness was found. Banner blindness seems to be a result of attentional filters adjustment that adapts to the abundance of information on the web pages.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceptual load
• banner blindness
• inattentional blindness
• usability
• visual search

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The study was implemented in the framework of the Basic Research Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics [grant number Basic Research Program] (HSE University) in 2022.