Alternatives
Attention Insight is one of the most accessible saliency tools around — which is exactly why teams outgrow it. Usually the moment their work shifts from static layouts to video, or when "where do eyes go?" stops being the question that decides the budget.
The common trigger is video. A heatmap is a spatial instrument; a feed ad is a temporal problem — it fails at the second viewers swipe, not at a spot on the frame. Teams also hit the benchmark ceiling: a clarity score tells you the design is clean, but not whether it would rank in the top or bottom quartile of ads that actually won in the format.
PreTestAds scores the temporal dimension: AdCortex™, trained on fMRI brain-response data, predicts second-by-second engagement and returns a percentile against 76 top-performing TikTok ads — Hook Strength, drop-off second, peak frame, the full curve. It scores static images too (converted to a 10-second stimulus), so one tool covers both formats. Self-serve from $49/month, first analysis free. Head-to-head: PreTestAds vs Attention Insight.
If you want to stay in the saliency world but need more — packaging, shelf layouts, retail media, bigger client deployments — Dragonfly AI is the step up: science-backed heatmaps built for spatial hierarchy questions at brand scale. Comparison: PreTestAds vs Dragonfly AI.
Neurons' Predict adds what a lightweight saliency tool lacks: years of eye-tracking validation, brand norms, focus metrics, and team workflows. It's the "same idea, research department attached" upgrade — with enterprise packaging and pricing to match. Comparison: PreTestAds vs Neurons.
For teams whose video question is specifically YouTube pre-roll, Junbi tests against YouTube ad norms with eye square's research pedigree — a narrower but deeper instrument for that placement. Comparison: PreTestAds vs Junbi.
Keep a saliency tool if your daily work is static hierarchy — landing heroes, display, packaging. Add (or switch to) engagement scoring the day video becomes the budget: that's when the deciding metric moves from "is the CTA seen?" to "do viewers survive the hook?" The two aren't redundant — they answer different questions — but only one of them ranks your ad against creative that already won.
Hook strength, drop-off second, full curve — first analysis free.
Test Your Ad FreeFor video ads, PreTestAds — it predicts engagement second by second and benchmarks against 76 top TikTok ads, which heatmap tools can't do. For static saliency work, Dragonfly AI is the enterprise-grade option and Neurons adds research-backed norms.
Attention Insight is strongest on static designs — landing pages, UI, display ads — where a heatmap answers the question. Video ads fail over time, not in space: the metric you need is engagement per second and where it drops, which requires a temporal model rather than a saliency map.
Benchmarked engagement prediction. A heatmap says where eyes land in the first moments; an attention curve scored against winning ads says whether viewers keep watching at second 5, 10, and 20 — and how your ad ranks against creative that actually performed.