## 3 Materials and Methods
### Eye-Tracking Measures and Data Analysis  
Attention was measured using gaze-related variables, which are based on the eye movement data of the previously-defined areas of interest (AOIs). In all research areas, AOIs are used to associate eye movement measures to parts of the stimulus presented, and they are defined separately in order to determine the most relevant parts of the stimuli [72]. In this study, the AOIs were identified at the experiment design phase. The Tobii Studio Software enables researchers to define the AOIs in order to use these areas for the analysis. The AOIs were the small sections and geometric areas of a banner that correspond to the specific content; as an example, the identified AOIs for banner 2b are illustrated in Figure 1. In order to analyze the eye movements, AOIs were defined for each banner ad before the experiments. The defined AOIs were as follows: 'brand', 'discount', and 'image'. The participants' scan-path during the banner ad viewing was tracked through fixation points and saccadic movements.  
In eye-tracking studies, fixation refers to when a participant' eye pauses on a specific AOI for more than a certain amount of time.  
In order to evaluate the attention participants paid to each AOI, we used three eye movement variables, namely, fixation count (FC), time to first fixation (TTF) and total visit duration (TVD), which are the most common eye-tracking indices used in visual behavior observations [73]. FC is the number of fixations on a specific AOI. The higher the FC of an AOI is, the more attractive it is to the viewer. TTF is the time from the start of the display of a stimulus until the participant fixates on the AOI for the first time. If the TTF of an AOI is short, it suggests that this region is very eye-catching. TVD is the duration of all of the visits within a specific AOI, and a longer TVD on a particular AOI indicates a greater amount of attention for that area.  
The data of the corresponding eye movement indices were generated using Tobii Studio Software. The data were pre-processed for analysis, and then a statistical analysis was performed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows software package (version 22; IBM Corporation, New York, NY, USA). In order to evaluate the influence of banner ads on the visual attention paid to banner elements, a series of repeated measure analyses of variance (RM-ANOVA, for the within-subjects factor) tests were conducted on the all of the participants' eye movement data for each of the three content elements. Similarly, in order to analyze the influence of brand familiarity on the visual attention paid to the different AOIs, two separate RM-ANOVAs with within-subjects factors were also performed on the participants who were already familiar with the brand, and on those who were unfamiliar with the brand. In addition to these, an RM-ANOVA with a between-subjects factor was employed in order to evaluate the effects of gender on the attention paid to the different AOIs of the banners. Given the significant ANOVA results, post hoc tests followed in order to investigate paired comparisons of differences. For the statistical analysis, an alpha level of 0.05 was used. The RM-ANOVA measures are solely prone to the violation of the assumption of sphericity. The violation of sphericity causes an increase in the Type I error rate. Therefore, the assumption of sphericity is very important for RM-ANOVA. All of the post hoc tests were adjusted according to Bonferroni, and only test statistics in which [PERSON]'s test indicated that the assumption of sphericity was not violated were reported.