Quick verdict — when to pick which
You want a performance signal on display creatives before they ship, you already have a way to build banners (Figma, Canva, an in-house designer, or Bannerflow itself), and your real problem is weak creative — not slow production.
Your primary bottleneck is producing display banners across many IAB sizes, markets, and languages. You need a drag-and-drop HTML5 banner builder, a resize engine, DCO, and direct publishing into display networks.
Different jobs in the display creative workflow
Display advertising has its own weight of problems. Creative has to work inside tiny IAB slots (300×250, 728×90, 160×600) where every pixel competes for attention against publisher content, site chrome, and user intent that is almost never focused on ads. The banner has maybe one to two seconds to register a message and elicit a click. Most display creative fails that bar not because of production quality, but because of structural attention problems — the CTA is in a decay zone, the headline competes with the product image, the entire banner is too cluttered for a 300×250 to parse.
Bannerflow exists to solve the production side of that problem. It takes a master design, applies it across the full IAB ladder, handles localization, and pushes the output into programmatic display networks. The production quality is genuinely good. But production quality is the step after you have a creative worth producing, and nothing in the Bannerflow workflow tells you whether your master is actually going to convert.
GazeIQ is the missing step. Run the master banner through our Google Display context (300×250 or 728×90) before it enters production. You get the attention heatmap, a 0–100 Attention Score, five element-level sub-metrics, and principle-based fix recommendations — all in under 8 seconds. If the score is under 65, you have just saved yourself the cost of producing 15 weak resize variants.
Feature comparison: GazeIQ vs. Bannerflow
| Feature | Bannerflow | GazeIQ |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | HTML5 banner production and distribution | Pre-launch attention scoring for display and social |
| Banner builder / editor | Yes — drag-and-drop HTML5 editor | No — upload-based scoring |
| Multi-size resize from master | Yes — core feature, 15+ IAB sizes | Score masters in 300×250 and 728×90 contexts |
| Attention heatmap | Yes — TranSalNet, CC=0.907 on SALICON | |
| Element-level scoring | Not in scope | CTA visibility, headline, hierarchy, edge, clutter |
| Fix recommendations | Not in scope | Principle-based (Von Restorff, F/Z-pattern, hierarchy) |
| DCO (dynamic creative optimization) | Yes — feed-driven banner variants | Not in scope |
| Direct publishing to ad networks | Yes | No — we score, you publish |
| A/B pre-testing up to 5 variants | Via live spend testing | Side-by-side pre-launch in under 8 seconds |
| Free tier | Trial / demo-based | 3 scans, no credit card |
| Pricing | Quote-based, enterprise tier | $29 / $79 / $249 per month |
Bannerflow feature descriptions based on publicly available product material at bannerflow.com.
When Bannerflow is the better choice
For display-heavy brands, Bannerflow is a serious production tool. Here is where it is the right buy and GazeIQ cannot cover:
When GazeIQ is the better choice
And here is where attention pre-testing becomes the tool that actually moves display performance:
Can you use both?
Yes — and for enterprise display programs this is the highest value pairing in the stack. The workflow: designers build the master in Figma or directly in Bannerflow's editor. Before it enters the resize engine and propagates across 15 IAB sizes and 8 markets, the master runs through GazeIQ's Google Display context. Score 75+ and it proceeds into production. Score under 65 and it goes back to design with specific fixes — move the CTA out of the lower-right edge decay, reduce competing focal points in the top half, tighten the headline hierarchy.
The math is simple. If Bannerflow turns one master into 15 resized variants, and half of those variants run in a market where that weak master propagates into real ad spend, you have scaled a creative problem by 15 times. A single GazeIQ scan takes 8 seconds and catches the problem at the root. Most teams find the pre-testing subscription pays for itself on the first prevented weak campaign.
Frequently asked questions
What is Bannerflow?
Bannerflow is a Swedish display advertising platform focused on producing HTML5 banner creative at scale. It provides a drag-and-drop banner builder, a master-design-to-multi-size resize engine, localization tooling, DCO (dynamic creative optimization), and direct publishing to major display networks. It is especially strong for in-house creative teams at enterprise brands that run programmatic display across many IAB sizes and markets.
Is GazeIQ a direct Bannerflow replacement?
No. Bannerflow produces and distributes banner creative. GazeIQ scores creative for predicted attention before launch. If you are evaluating Bannerflow because you need to build banners, GazeIQ does not solve that problem — we do not have a banner builder. If you are evaluating Bannerflow because you want better-performing display creative, the real lever is pre-testing what you produce, and that is what GazeIQ does.
Does GazeIQ work for Google Display banner sizes?
Yes. Our Google Display context covers the two most-served IAB sizes — 300×250 (medium rectangle) and 728×90 (leaderboard) — which together account for the majority of Google Display impressions. You can upload a static export of any Bannerflow-produced banner in those dimensions and get back a full attention heatmap, Attention Score, and fix recommendations in under 8 seconds.
Can I use GazeIQ alongside Bannerflow?
This is the ideal pairing. Bannerflow's strength is producing a master banner and propagating it into 15+ IAB sizes. The risk is that a weak master propagates into 15+ weak variants. Running the master through GazeIQ before it goes into Bannerflow's resize engine catches structural problems — low CTA contrast, cluttered layout, buried headline — before they multiply across every size and market. One pre-test, dozens of fixes prevented.
How is GazeIQ different from a generic heatmap tool?
Generic heatmap tools output a raw saliency map and leave interpretation to you. GazeIQ is tuned specifically for ad creative performance. On top of the heatmap you get five ad-specific sub-scores (CTA visibility, headline salience, visual hierarchy, edge avoidance, clutter penalty), an overall Attention Score 0–100, and principle-based fix recommendations. For a display banner, that means you are not squinting at a red blob — you are getting a specific instruction to move the CTA out of the edge decay zone and increase its contrast by a measurable amount.