Predictive Eye Tracking: What Every Marketer Should Know

As featured on Marketingfacts – the leading platform for marketing & innovation

In an increasingly cluttered media landscape, getting noticed is no longer a given. Predictive eye tracking helps marketers and agencies understand what draws instant attention—those first 2 to 3 seconds where your creative either lands or gets lost in the cluttered advertising-landscape. That’s why we recently published an article on Marketingfacts (in Dutch), the #1 authority site for marketing / MarTech professionals in the Netherlands, to explain what Predictive Attention Tools can mean for them, but also on what it cannot do, as false claims are growing while predictive attention strategies emerge.

What is Predictive Eye Tracking?

Predictive eye tracking simulates human attention—without eye-tracking hardware and without user-input—by analyzing visual saliency: the elements that naturally stand out based on our survival brain. These insights are rendered as predictive heatmaps that show where attention is likely to go first (also see this comparison of a TVC with live / real eye-tracking hardware and predictive software).

Brainsight leverages this science-backed approach to help advertisers, marketers and UX/CRO professionals to pre-test visual content—whether for digital campaigns, DOOH, video creatives, or landing pages—before launch (so esssentially, before spending campaign budget on live-optimization).

Why This Matters for Marketers

Every day, your audience is bombarded with messages. Only the most visually optimized content survives the scroll. Using predictive attention tools helps you:

✅ Validate ad creatives in seconds

✅ Simulate your audience's' inuitive viewing behaviour

✅ Provide input (hypotheses) for A/B testing

✅ Improve creative performance across platforms

✅ Provide neuromarketing insights (without lab setups) for other research

Brainsight gives you access to eye-tracking heatmaps, gazeplots, brand tracking (text and logo), benchmarked attention and visual clarity and actionable insights in a matter of minutes—at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods, as no user-input is required. Brainsight offers premium predictive insights—without the hefty price tag.

What it can't do

We get often get great questions about what to expect from predictive attention tools. The market for predictive attention insights is growing and so are the false claims. With our neuroscience background, coming from neuromarketing research services, we are keen to stick to science and data. Sometimes we see claims that raises our eyebrows. From a validated, scientific approach, we can tell you that predictive neuro-science tools is unable to capture: 

❌ Emotional responses (e.g. excitement, likeability)

❌ Purchase intent

❌ Brand preference

❌ Persuasion or message acceptance

❌ Personal relevance

You can measure those things—but not predict them. Predictive Attention is a powerful way to guide the eye and make sure the right elements stand out, to set the stage for engagement.

But the actual engagement? That depends on a mix of human factors: emotions, memories, beliefs, biases, and personal preferences.

Read the Full Article

👉 Read the full article on Marketingfacts (Dutch). In it, we dive deeper into the science behind instant attention, and why this shift in creative testing matters now more than ever.

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