Animation intensity of sponsorship signage: The impact on sport viewers’ attention and viewer confusion

Visual animation of sponsorship signage has become a frequently used technique at televised sports with the aim to increase viewer attention. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of animation intensity of sponsorship signage on sport viewers’ attention and to examine viewers’ visual confusion as a reaction to increasing animation intensity.

Based on a lab experiment, eye-tracking methodology was applied to analyze the participants’ visual attention to animated sponsorship signage. The stimulus films showed a highlight video clip of a tennis match and included five different intensity levels of animated signage. The hypothesized causal relationships were tested by using linear regression analysis and structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that animation intensity of sponsorship signage positively influences sport viewers’ attention. The findings also reveal that animation intensity has no significant effect on sport viewers’ visual confusion.

The findings suggest the use of higher animation intensity levels for effective sponsorship communication in sports broadcasts. Furthermore, there is still more potential to improve sponsorship communication at televised tennis events as viewer confusion was not affected by animation intensity.

This research contributes to the body of knowledge by taking into account different intensity levels of animated sponsorship signage in a tennis event context. It is the first study that demonstrates the impact of animation intensity to improve sponsorship communication at televised sporting events.