• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 15, 2009

An eye tracking study conducted on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by a digital marketing company reveals trends about the way people interact with paid ads in social media sites.

Oneupweb found that not only do people spend time viewing paid ads on social networks, but they often looked at the ads more quickly once they landed on the search results page. For example, 65% of participants engage with sponsored ads within the first 10 seconds of their search. Often times the path eyes scan the page often does not follow the order of the search results. Sponsored ads were looked at before the third or fourth result.

Marketers face the constant challenge of keeping up with and understanding consumer search behavior. Social networking sites offer opportunities to develop a relationship between brands and consumers, display ads and search. But a lot of confusion over the effectiveness of advertising on social networking sites still exists. The study hopes to alleviate some of the mystery.

The interaction with content in social media sites is a little different, but Tim Kauffold, director of operations at Oneupweb, says most people still looked to the top left corner and scanned across to the right of the page. "When we looked at the gaze plotting, some had a tendency to start on the right side of the page where the ads are placed," he says. "There's not blindness toward ads in social networks. People still look at the ads."

How often do the survey participants log into Facebook? About 29% of the participants revealed they log into Facebook several times daily, followed by 39% every day, 17% weekly, and 17% less than 3 times per month.

The study also observed search habits on Twitter. It does not support sponsored ads so Oneupweb could not include Twitter in the comparative analysis of user engagement with natural and paid search results.

Twitter, however, does draw a lot of attention for its use as an essential social media marketing tool. Oneupweb found it important to include Twitter in the study to better understand how users approach a search task.

About than of survey participants revealed they were satisfied with their brand search on Twitter. Many liked that they could find the most current opinions about a product.

Within the first ten seconds of viewing the search results, participants gaze fixated on the sponsored ads. Contrary to expected behavior, the participants viewed the sponsored ads prior to viewing the second and third results. The heat map visualization shows the aggregate group data for the initial impressions when viewing a Pepsi search results on Facebook.

The Oneupweb study indicates similar behavior was observed throughout the YouTube search. The participants engaged with the sponsored ads in the process of completing the search task.

Eye tracking tools work by detecting and tracking fixations. A fixation is counted when a gaze is positioned on an area of approximately 50 pixels for at least 100 milliseconds. The study conducted with 25 survey participants was done from late June through early July.