Relevance & Research Question: Online eye-tracking by use of the patented spotlight-viewer methodology is an academically renowned (e.g. Psychology & Marketing, Vol. 29, Issue 6) and in applied research well established (in Germany e.g. mo’web research, MW Research, Interrogare) way to measure visual attention in online-surveys. However, so far its use had been limited to static advertising material. Due to the popularity of dynamic content in digital advertising the goal of the current research was to also allow rich media and video content to be tested with the spotlight-viewer in (mobile) web-surveys.

Methods & Data: Two main challenges had to be overcome in order to satisfy this demand. First, the data volume had to be minimised to keep download time for study participants within an acceptable limit. Second, it had to be ensured that independent of desktop or mobile device, browser type and internet speed all participants are confronted with the identical visual content at each point of time. Only then data could be jointly analysed. Following this, a video is captured of the screen content and frame rate is reduced if necessary. The (remaining) video frames are then fed into the spotlight-viewer and presented to the participants while simultaneously recording their viewing behaviour.

Results: On the basis of the first empirical results generated with the enhanced spotlight-viewer it is presented in how far, when and which rich-media advertising drives attention of Internet users. As a result the significance of pre-attentional bottom-up processes as well as parafoveal and peripheral vision in digital advertising research is discussed.

Added Value: The added value of the presented enhancement is that all types of dynamic advertising content can be tested on any desktop or mobile internet device concerning the ability to attract and hold attention and this (unlike infrared eye-tracking) in a simple, unobtrusive, low-cost, and time-efficient way. This allows to make an effective choice on which digital ads to run and with what weight in overall ad rotation.