Poynter is slowly releasing more findings from the EyeTrack07 study this week, while the institute is hosting a seminar on the findings and the implications. (Also see this earlier blog post for more.)
Early reports indicated there weren’t too many surprises in the study – but some editors’ theories were proven correct.
“There was reinforcement of every journalist's hope -- that readers will stay with a story they have chosen in print,” Poynter reported. “It turns out they'll stay even longer when reading online. The editors were also pleased to hear that the extra work of providing lively, illustrated teasers or telling stories in a graphic package pays off by attracting extra reader attention.”
Of the surprises the study did reveal, the most interesting was in print advertising layout – print ads that are ¾ of a page or 5/6 of a page get more attention than full page ads.
Unfortunately for those interested in digital media/online advertising, there’s very little coming from Poynter about that subject so far.
According to a short online advertising-related MP3 from Poynter, a woman at the seminar asked for some discussion about standardizing online advertising sizes and options to make advertising online easier for both newspapers and advertisers.
In response, an unidentified seminar leader said, “The problem is, we all have slightly different needs and slightly different interests. I hope we can move quickly on this question on some form of standardization, but ultimately, it will take enough people in a room who rep enough orgs to disregard the advice they’re getting from their own IT and online people to come to a deal. And that may take a while. … At the moment we’re frustrating advertisers with all the different formats….”
Separately in the online realm, “The study found relatively light attention to blogs, photo galleries and podcasts, which EyeTrack co-authors Sara Quinn and Pegie Stark Adam speculated could be a result of the scarcity and placement of such features.”