Examining Audiences’ Gaze at Advertisement of Sponsor Companies in Table Tennis Games’ Broadcasts

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate where the audiences of sports broadcasts are looking when watching table tennis games on television, and examine their gaze and cognition at sponsors’ advertisement for conducting fundamental verification to explore sponsor value of table tennis league aiming for complete professional league in the future. The direction of their gaze was measured by an eye movement analysis instrument (EMR ACTUS). The subjects were eight college students (six males and two females, mean age: 21.0±1.3 years old). The results of this study demonstrated that about 90 % of the subjects’ gaze was directed to places other than advertisements. As a result of measuring the number of gaze placement on the advertisement and the gaze placement time, it was indicated that the gaze to the advertisement tends to gather in the digital advertisement behind on the players (M = 7.50 times, 3.42 seconds). On the other hand, the results of the interview for subjects after measurements demonstrated three out of eight subjects answered concrete sponsors’ name on digital advertisement. From the above, it could be said that this study showed a new knowledge about gaze and advertisement cognition for sports broadcast’s audience of table tennis game.