You are walking down a shopping street. All around you are dozens of shop windows, signs, and billboards. However, among them all, something makes you turn your head: a product that starts spinning, a screen showing an animation, or a figure that seems to pop out of an ad.
Why did you notice that specifically?
Movement has a special relationship with our visual perception. The brain has mechanisms that allow us to detect changes in the environment, even when we are not looking directly at them. A capacity that we use constantly and that also influences how we perceive advertising.
From mechanical shop windows to LED screens, fake holograms, and three-dimensional ads, the Dynamic advertising take advantage of this sensitivity to try to stand out among hundreds of stimuli. But science poses an interesting question: does getting someone to look mean they will also remember the ad or buy the product?
When we observe a scene, our brain does not process all its elements with the same priority. Some features, such as intense contrasts, sudden changes, and certain movements, can attract our attention even when we are focused on something else.
Different regions of the visual system are involved in movement processing. One of the most studied is the MT area, also known as V5, which specializes in analyzing information related to the direction and speed of objects.
Our peripheral vision also plays an important role. Although it does not allow us to distinguish details with the same precision as central vision, it contributes to detecting changes outside the point we are looking at.
That is why we can perceive that something is moving beside us without having to first direct our gaze toward it.
From an evolutionary perspective, this sensitivity makes sense. Detecting an approaching object or an unexpected movement can help us react to relevant events in the environment.
However, there is a difference between seeing something and deciding to pay attention to it.
Neuroscientists Maurizio Corbetta and Gordon Shulman explained in a study published in 2002 how our attention combines voluntary mechanisms, related to what we want to find, and others that respond to environmental stimuli.
Let's think about someone looking for a pharmacy. Their attention is focused on locating a green cross among the establishments on the street. But if an object starts moving unexpectedly in a nearby shop window, it may momentarily divert their gaze.
This is one of the perceptual principles that dynamic advertising leverages: introducing changes capable of competing for our attention, even if we are not looking for the advertised message.
We might think that any moving element is more striking than a static one. However, science has shown that the issue is more complex.
In 2003, researchers Richard Abrams and Shawn Christ published a study titled Motion Onset Captures Attention, in which they analyzed how people reacted to static and moving objects.
During the experiments, participants had to identify letters among different visual stimuli. Some remained motionless, others were in continuous motion, and others began to move suddenly.
The researchers observed that objects that started to move received attentional priority, while those that had been moving for a while did not show the same general advantage over static elements.
In other words, the start of the movement could be especially relevant for capturing attention.
This discovery allows for an interesting distinction in advertising design.
A screen that continuously plays an animation does not necessarily provoke the same response as an element that remains still and suddenly begins to move.
Something similar happens with certain interactive shop windows, where a product can be activated when a visitor approaches, or with ads that incorporate visual changes at specific moments.
That does not mean that an animation triggered by sensors will always work better. But it does show that movement should not be understood solely as decoration: the moment it appears can change the way we perceive it.
It is one thing to study attention in a laboratory and another to observe what happens on a commercial street.
In 2025, researchers from the University of Bamberg and other institutions presented an experiment conducted in the window of a hat shop. They wanted to test how different types of movement influenced the behavior of passersby.
They observed 289 people in three different situations.
In the first, the window display remained completely static. In the second, a fan quickly moved some decorative garlands. In the third, the hats themselves rotated slowly on a platform.
The results showed interesting differences.
Movement caused more people to stop in front of the window display. But not all movements had the same effect.
The rapidly moving garlands attracted more passersby. In contrast, when it was the hats that rotated slowly, visitors spent more time observing the products.
Although these are preliminary results presented at a conference, the experiment raises an important distinction for window dressing: attracting the gaze toward an establishment and getting someone to examine its products are different objectives.
Another study, conducted by Robert Ravnik and Franc Solina and published in 2013, analyzed the attention of 1,294 customers toward a digital screen in a clothing store.
The researchers observed that approximately 35% looked specifically at the screen. Furthermore, dynamic content received an average attention of 0.9 seconds, compared to 0.6 seconds for static content.
Although these differences do not in themselves prove an increase in sales, they do show that visual presentation can modify the time we spend observing an advertisement.
In a shop window, movement can serve to make someone stop, but also to show a product from different perspectives or highlight a specific feature.
If movement can attract our attention, why not use it in all ads?
Because our brain is also capable of ignoring visual information, even when it is designed to stand out.
A well-known example is the invisible gorilla experiment, developed by psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.
In it, participants had to count the passes made by a group of basketball players. While they were focused on that task, a person dressed as a gorilla walked across the scene.
Surprisingly, some of the participants did not even notice it.
The experiment demonstrates that we do not consciously process everything that happens in front of our eyes. The task we are performing greatly influences what manages to capture our attention.
Something similar happens in advertising.
In 2010, a study led by Jarmo Kuisma analyzed how people reacted to static and animated banners using eye-tracking technology.
Researchers discovered that animation barely improved average attention and that its results depended on the format. In some vertical ads it worked better, while in certain horizontal banners it could be counterproductive.
There is also a phenomenon known as banner blindness.
In 2009, Jörg Müller and other researchers studied how people reacted to digital screens located in public spaces. They observed that many tended to ignore them because they expected to find irrelevant advertising.
This explains a paradox of visual communication: an ad can be very eye-catching and, even so, go completely unnoticed.
When we are continuously exposed to screens, animations, and commercial messages, we can learn to direct our attention toward other elements.
Therefore, adding movement does not guarantee that a campaign will be more effective. The content, its placement, and the interest it sparks in the audience remain fundamental.
Dynamic advertising did not begin with the arrival of digital screens.
Long before, there were already shop windows with rotating mechanisms, animated figures, and sets capable of moving. Movement was part of the commercial experience.
In 2019, for example, Studio Astolfi developed a series of shop windows for Hermès in Lisbon where different elements moved through physical mechanisms. The result combined products and decorative elements in a composition that looked like a small theatrical performance.
Currently, new technologies allow this idea to be taken much further.
One of the best-known examples is WAVE, an installation created in 2020 by the South Korean studio d’strict for a huge curved LED screen located in the COEX building in Seoul.
In it, a wave seemed to move violently inside a glass structure.
The combination of animation, perspective, and screen geometry created a visual illusion of depth, making the content appear to occupy a physical space.
Another increasingly visible technology is the so-called 3D holographic fans.
Although their name suggests they generate real holograms, their operation is different. They use arms with LED lights that rotate at high speed. The diodes turn on and off in a synchronized manner to form images that appear to float in the air.
In reality, they do not produce authentic optical holograms, but a visual illusion based on movement and image representation.
Nike used this technology in 2024 to present its Air Max Dn sneakers through HYPERVSN installations in Paris.
There are also transparent OLED screens, which allow digital content to be superimposed over physical products located behind the device. LG Display, for example, installed screens of this type in the windows of Harrods, in London, in 2019.
In addition to these solutions are architectural LED screens, displays with animations, kinetic installations, and portable advertising supports.
All of them use movement in one way or another, but their possibilities go beyond attracting attention: they can help present products, explain their features, or build visual experiences that are difficult to reproduce with a static medium.
This is probably the most important question for any brand that is considering investing in digital advertising.
And the results are not as simple as it might seem.
Research published in Journal of Marketing in 2025, conducted by Dennis Herhausen, David de Jong, and Dhruv Grewal, analyzed 237 experimental audiovisual advertising campaigns in supermarkets, with data from approximately 30 million shoppers.
The researchers found a positive effect on purchases of the advertised products. Their main estimate reflected an 8.1% increase in the relative odds of purchase, measured using an odds ratio.
However, the advertisements combined different elements: movement, sound, screen location, and proximity activation.
Therefore, it cannot be stated that movement, by itself, produced that increase.
Furthermore, there is research showing the limits of excessive visual stimulation.
In 2023, Elisa Schweiger and other researchers published a study on projections used in commercial displays. They discovered that moderate-intensity presentations achieved better sales results than traditional options and those with very high intensity.
This challenges the idea that the more spectacular an advertisement is, the better commercial results it will have.
And there is still another fundamental difference: looking at an ad is not the same as remembering it.
A person may stop in front of an eye-catching installation, photograph it, and walk away without having identified the brand or product being advertised.
In short, dynamic advertising leverages real mechanisms of our visual perception and can help capture attention, present products, and improve certain commercial results.
But its effectiveness depends on how it is used.
It is not about incorporating movement at any cost, but about ensuring that this movement has a function within the message.
Because in visual communication there is an important difference between getting someone to turn their head and getting them to remember what they just saw.
