Age, and the perception of illustrations in advertising.

It is a central part of the research from the psychology of perception that the placement of images on an advertising page needs to be handled with great care. While text is generally perceived by the left hemisphere of the brain, the image is generally seen on the right, and, given the limited amount of interaction that there is between the two halves of the brain, putting text and pictures next to each other can put off all but the most committed reader.

Now there is new evidence that the unwillingness to give time to adverts where images and text knock up against each other is related to age.

Let me add another caveat first, however. We are talking here about the readership of advertising material by people who are not immediately drawn to the subject matter. Consider the advert you receive which maybe relates to you in general - but is not of instant specific interest. (For example, you are interested in gardening, but you are not thinking of buying a new lawn mower. You receive an ad for a lawn mower. It is not wholly inappropriate, but it is not top of your list of interests at this time.)  This is the sort of situation we are talking about.

It seems that people of more mature years find the close juxtaposition of image and text even more off-putting than those of younger years - and they find it hard enough to focus with ads of this type.
Older consumers prefer single-image advertisements over ads with multi-image collages by a margin of 66% to 34%, according to a recent image-preference survey by Creating Results (http://www.creatingresults.com/).

Their Photo Finish study set out to look at which type of photography is most effective when advertising to Baby Boomers and older generations. What they discovered was not just the expected difference in preference of photographs, but in the responsiveness to pictures overall - a finding that fits totally with the earlier findings from the psychology of perception.
Interestingly, older people preferred: 

• Vibrant pictures featuring brighter colours and expressive models rather than cooler colours and contemplative models, 65% to 35%.
• 65% of respondents preferred images in which the model's face was clearly identifiable vs. cropped photographs.
• The older a consumer, the stronger his or her positive feelings for identifiable photos. 76% of those over age 75 preferred recognizable photos, as well as 75% of 65-74-year-olds and 62% of those ages 55-64.
• Lifestyle photography was preferred to product photos by all respondents (59%) and was most effective with those designated by Creating Results as Caregivers (71%), Gardeners (78%) and Volunteers (75%).