Eye Tracking

The variety of digital devices available presents advertisers with an abundance of marketing platforms. Sands Research ran studies on selected devices in order to determine the effects that scale, luminosity, and volume have on product presentation.

The use of eye tracking data is common in digital media studies. However, Sands Research added a real-time interpretation of the brain response to a specific instant in a recording, to interpret why a subject is looking at a target. Correlating EEG and eye tracking data allows for a time-locked analysis of how consumer interaction plays into the perception of visual media and retail environments. By utilizing traditional methods in advertising research alongside brain response, Sands Research was able to deliver unparalleled accuracy in measuring actual consumer experience.

On websites, for instance, heat maps reveal the "Inverted L" — a well-known and identified pattern in eye movement that web designers and developers commonly utilize. In addition to this information, Sands Research also evaluated how much effortful processing was necessary for an individual to interpret what it sees. A more accurate measure, using Sands Research proprietary brain imaging software, is the measurement of activity in the orbital frontal lobe.

Two industry-leading systems were used across studies: SMI (SensoMotoric Instruments, Germany) for lab-based studies requiring maximum precision, and Arrington Research ViewPoint (USA) for mobile solutions and naturalistic environments. Both were synchronized via trigger pulse to the 68-channel Neuroscan EEG recording, enabling frame-accurate alignment of gaze position with cortical source reconstructions computed using Curry software.

Each participant wore a 68-channel EEG cap while seated in front of a calibrated eye tracking display. Stimuli — commercials, print ads, or web pages — were presented in a controlled environment while both gaze position and neural activity were recorded simultaneously and synchronized to a common clock.

Sands Research used two industry-leading eye tracking systems across its neuromarketing studies, each selected for specific recording environments and study requirements.

The videos below show gaze overlay recordings — each participant's fixation point rendered as a moving dot, with a heat map building in real time as fixations accumulate across the group. The synchronized EEG NEF trace appears below the stimulus, showing when neural engagement peaks align with high-fixation moments.

Across Super Bowl studies from 2008 to 2013, eye tracking data consistently revealed that the highest-ranked ads shared specific visual attention patterns — not just in what viewers looked at, but when. The findings below represent selected key results from Sands Research gaze analysis studies.

Fixation density maps aggregate gaze data across all participants, revealing the collective visual attention pattern for each stimulus frame. Upload your fixation map images below to replace the placeholders.