The Complete Guide to AI Heatmaps

You’ve got 1–3 seconds.

That’s the window where a shopper decides whether your product gets noticed, or disappears into the shelf like it was never there. This is the First Moment of Truth, the split second where your packaging, pricing, placement, promos, and planogram either work together, or get wrecked by a competitor with better shelf presence.

For years, brands obsessed over share of shelf. More facings. More linear feet. More “visibility.”
But here’s the truth: shelf space does not equal attention.

Retail shelves are noisy. Shoppers are overloaded. And the brain is ruthless about filtering out what it does not care about. That’s why the real game is share of attention, because attention is what drives consideration, conversion, and ultimately, sales.

This whitepaper breaks down the science of shopper attention and how to actually measure it using eye tracking and next-gen predictive AI heatmapping. We synthesize behavioral psychology, visual saliency research, and modern computer vision to show how brands can predict what shoppers will look at before a product hits the shelf.

Inside, you’ll uncover the Top 10 attention drivers we consistently see across retail environments, including:

• Why faces steal attention, and how to use gaze cueing to redirect it

• How contrast and lighting create instant shelf magnetism

• Why out-of-stocks create dead zones, and attention halos next door

• The power of eye-level placement, brand blocking, and smart adjacencies

• The unexpected “camouflage effect” of small packaging

• How texture breaks and shape variation disrupt autopilot shopping

We also dig into the strengths and limitations of AI models like SalGAN, DeepGaze, and BCE, and what it means for the future of retail strategy.

If you’re building planograms, optimizing shelf strategy, or fighting for attention in a crowded aisle, this is your playbook.

Download the whitepaper and start designing shelves that win attention, and convert it.