"Overall, based on looking at all the homepage designs tested, advertising placed on top and in the left column of the page was viewed most."

http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/advertising.htm

Worth a read.

Excellent thread! I am very happy you brought this to the forums.

I have seen many studios on eye tracking, not in relation to ads. But more in relation as to where to put ones navigation and text.

From the studies I have seen, people tend to look right and down from the most prominent image on the page. So if there is a big ad in the middle of the page, you can expect a person to look from the right of that big ad and slightly down.

I would also expect placing ads on the left hand column, would get more visibility (hindsight). Why? Because most sites have site navigation either on the top or left hand side, you rarely see ads at the top right portion of the page.

Does this mean, we can expect to see lots of navigational modifications taking place at some of our favorite web sites? Danny, are you going to change the left hand side nav of SEW and put it on the right? :)

This report was first posted earlier yesterday iin another forum:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1535