Pop-Up Animations: Impacts and Implications for Website Design and Online Advertising

HCI and MIS: Applications, Galletta, D. and Zhang, P. (eds), Volume 5, Series of Advances in Management Information Systems, M.E. Sharpe, 2006

Posted: 6 Nov 2013

Date Written: 2006

Abstract

Owing to the rapid growth of Internet technologies, Web site design, and online advertisements, pop-up animations have affected and will continue to affect millions of people. Our understanding of the effectiveness and the impact of online advertisements on consumers is still limited from a theoretical perspective, and the empirical evidence continues to be scant. This paper synthesizes and integrates several lab-controlled experiments conducted by the author over an eight-year period (from 1996 to 2003) on the impact of pop-up animations in the Web environment. Human visual attention literature is used to emphasize human cognitive characteristics that prevent or enable us to behave in certain ways when there is animation in our vision field. These studies, together, address the following research questions: (1) As a non-primary information source, does animation decrease viewers’ information-seeking performance? (2) If so, do location and timing of pop-up animation matter? (3) As viewers’ familiarity with online advertisements increases, do those early animation effects diminish over years? The studies also validate the applicability of visual attention theories in the Web environment and have significant practical implications for online advertising strategies, both for marketers and content providers.

Keywords: Animation, Pop-Up, Information Seeking, Online Advertising, Visual Attention, Visual Interference, World Wide Web, Lab-Controlled Experiment

Suggested Citation

Zhang, Ping, Pop-Up Animations: Impacts and Implications for Website Design and Online Advertising (2006). HCI and MIS: Applications, Galletta, D. and Zhang, P. (eds), Volume 5, Series of Advances in Management Information Systems, M.E. Sharpe, 2006, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2349965

Ping Zhang (Contact Author)

Syracuse University ( email )

Hinds Hall
Syracuse, NY 13244
United States

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