Movement - the unusual answer to many advertising challenges

Here, Gareth Holmes (VP, commercial strategy and media at SeenThis) looks at how advertisers can boost the performance of their advertising by increasing engagement, attention and recall by leveraging movement through video.

The ability of humans to detect movement is a crucial aspect of vision, providing significant evolutionary advantages that have served our species well over the millennia.

The human eye has specialized cells called photoreceptors (rods and cones) that detect light and movement. Rods are particularly sensitive to low light and motion, making them essential for detecting movement in dim conditions.

When movement occurs, it creates a change in the visual field that is processed by specific pathways in the brain. The primary visual cortex has neurons that are sensitive to motion, allowing for the detection of the direction and speed of moving objects.

Detecting movement has been crucial for survival throughout human evolution. Early humans needed to be aware of their surroundings to identify predators, prey, and other threats. This instinctive focus on movement helped enhance our survival rates.

Movement naturally attracts attention. This phenomenon is known as "bottom-up attention," where the characteristics of the stimulus - such as motion - capture our focus without conscious effort. Early in our evolution, this automatic response helped in quickly assessing potential threats.

The brain has limited cognitive resources for processing information. Movement stands out in the visual field and requires less cognitive effort to notice, leading to a quicker reaction. This is why movements, even peripheral ones, can easily draw our attention.

Humans have an innate startle reflex that is triggered by unexpected movement, which is a protective mechanism. This reflex initially helped prepare our bodies to respond to potential threats whilst today most of these threats have diminished, the evolution of our internal systems remains intact.

Movement often piques curiosity. Humans are naturally inclined to explore and understand their environment, so moving objects are inherently intriguing and warrant attention.

We humans can't easily ignore movement, for numerous reasons, including our innate evolutionary response, biological wiring that prioritizes motion, automatic attention mechanisms, and the importance of movement in social interactions and environmental awareness. This combination ensures that movement captures our focus and prompts reactions, often without conscious thought.

For all these reasons, leveraging movement through video in advertising offers a profound advantage in consumer engagement that static images simply cannot match.

The human visual system is inherently wired to prioritize motion, allowing video to capture attention more effectively and evoke emotional responses that resonate with viewers. This instinctive focus on movement facilitates quicker recognition and processing, enabling brands to convey messages and stories in a dynamic, memorable way.

The automatic attention mechanisms triggered by movement stimulate curiosity and engagement, making consumers more likely to connect with the content.

Ultimately, video advertising taps into our evolutionary predisposition to notice movement, transforming passive viewing into an active, engaging experience that fosters deeper connections between consumers and brands.

So if the questions are: how to increase engagement; how to increase attention; how to be remembered and recalled; how to boost the performance of advertising?

The answer is video.