3M just launched a brand new online Visual Attention service which analyzes images and tells you how viewers will look at your image, or advertisement and in which sequence. And this is based on 30 years of vision science research.

Some of the views you have access to when on the site

Plavix

Vicks Vaporub

We’ve tried it, and you can see some of the results on the right. From the looks of the heatmap, both Plavix and Vicks Vaporub seem to have done a pretty good job of developing effective ads. But the service does more than just generate heatmaps even if in itself it’s a great feature.

At the time of writing this post, the service was still in beta release and also free to try. You will need to have Silverlight installed as a browser plug-in to be able to use it. Silverlight is a free download from Microsoft.

From the 3M site, this service is:

Predictive: Image processing algorithms that predict what people will notice in visual scenes.

Scientific: Taking advantage of over 30 years of Vision Science research. 3M VAS results correlate well with Eye Tracking studies. Click here for more information.

Fast: Results in minutes. Fast enough to work within existing design workflows.

Cost Effective: No need for the time and expense required for traditional market research tools.

Check it out on the 3M website.

Hat tip: Brand Republik