【正文】 that actually prevent browsers from downloading ads (AdsOff!, Guard, JunkBuster...). One can thus hypothesize that, as surfers gain more familiarity with the medium, they learn to differentiate informational content from advertising. Ultimately, this would give them the ability to disregard banner ads. Given this possible learning and avoidance behavior, we start our investigation by measuring the extent to which surfers pay attention to banner ads. We begin by formulating the following two hypotheses: H1: Inter users avoid looking at banner ads. H2: The more time users have spent on the Inter, the less they pay attention to banner ads. To test these hypotheses, we asked a group of subjects to look at various web pages while hooked up to an eyetracking device that records their eye movements and fixations. Eyetracking studies are not new. Javal (1878) used eyetracking to study reading patterns more than 100 years ago. Although reading studies are still being conducted through eyetracking (Hy246。中文 3788 字 標題： Inter Advertising: Is Anybody Watching? 原文： Abstract Clickthrough rates have emerged as the de facto measure of Inter advertisingeffectiveness. Unfortunately, clickthrough rates are plummeting. This decline prompts fourcritical questions: (1) why do banner ads seem to be ineffective。n228。 Bis. Our first study was very revealing. It provides us with an answer to the first question motivating this study (Why are banner ads not effective?) and a hint of an answer to the second and third questions (What can advertisers do to improve banner effectiveness? Does clickthrough rate undervalue online advertising?). The study shows that one of the problems hindering banner ad effectiveness is that half of the banner exposures are not attended to. The problem is not only that surfers do not look at the banners, but they also seem to purposefully avoid looking at them (Hypothesis 1). There are at least two possible explanations for this apparently clairvoyant behavior. First, site designers have traditionally located banner ads at the top of their web pages. This might lead web surfers to treat as a potential ad every item that is located at the top of the , as has been noted by Janiszewski (1998), peripheral vision allows subjects to recognize objects that are located outside their focal point of attention (as measured by the eyetracking device). This ability, coupled with the fact that most banner ads have the same shape (468x60 pixels) provides web surfers with the ability to train themselves into recognizing banner ads for what they are without having to actually focus on them. Both of these explanations assume that surfers learn over time and develop strategies to avoid devoting attention to , we did not find support for Hypothesis 2. This probably means that it takes less than 25 Inter sessions to learn to avoid banners. That only half the banner ads are looked at is highly detrimental to clickthrough cannot click on something one does not look at! It does not mean, however, that half of the banner exposures are wasted. Research has shown that consumers do not need to fully process a message in order to be influenced by it. Janiszewski (1990a, 1990b, and 1993) has researched the topic extensively. Among other things, his research shows that incidental exposure to advertising can enhance a consumer’s liking for the ad and brand advertised despite the consumer’s inability to recognize having previously seen the ad and brand (a situation similar to ours). Othe