Visual attention to blu's parody warnings and the FDA's warning on e-cigarette advertisements

Objectives: In 2017, the e-cigarette brand, blu, released advertisements featuring large, boxed, positively-framed messages. These messages mimicked the format of FDA-mandated warnings that would appear on e-cigarette advertisements in the United States in 2018. We compared attention to blu's parody warnings and FDA-mandated warning appearing on blu advertisements.

Methods: N = 73 young adults who had used tobacco participated in an eye-tracking study. Participants viewed three blu e-cigarette advertisements in random order: one with a parody warning and two with the FDA-mandated warning (one with a model's face and one without). Areas of interest (AOIs) were the parody or FDA-mandated warning. We compared dwell time on AOIs between the three advertisements.

Results: Participants viewed parody warnings longer than each FDA-mandated warning on average (254 and 608 ms longer; p's < 0.02). Comparing the advertisements with FDA-mandated warnings revealed that participants spent less time looking at the warning in the advertisement with a model's face (354 fewer milliseconds; p = 0.001).

Conclusions: Parody warnings attracted more visual attention than FDA-mandated warnings, and the presence of a face in the advertisement drew attention away from the FDA-mandated warning. Results underscore the need for advertisement regulations that support increased attention to health warnings.