I don't have any research to offer, but I do share your concern. That's 
why I design such banners with info that is inspiring rather than 
essential to the content. And I use cookies so that each time the user 
visits, he or she sees a different version of the banner.  This is 
especially helpful on a site that doesn't update very frequently.

I hope others respond to this thread.
Nancy

Adam Guasch-Melendez wrote:
> Has anyone done any research - or come across any - on auto-rotating content
> banners? I don't mean ad banners, I mean sites such as the White House (
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/) and the many US government sites that replicate
> the feature (http://www.state.gov/ or http://www.nps.gov/). Generally, it's
> a large banner with a strong graphic image and a short header or descriptive
> text that links to a secondary page; the banner rotates through four or more
> options, and also allows users to click through the options.
>
> Although the sites that use this feature clearly intend to attract attention
> to each of the rotating elements, I think it's also possible that if the
> initial topic doesn't grab the user's attention, a casual user scanning the
> page may simply read - and scroll - past the banner on to the rest of the
> page rather than waiting for the rotation or clicking through, so that items
> intended to be "featured" are never seen at all. I'm not comfortable with
> relying on users' willingness to break their browsing habits (scanning, in
> this case). But that's just speculation, and I'd love to see research. Can
> anyone point me in the right direction?
>
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