Attention part 1: Future currency of digital marketing?
Pavan Appaiah N, technical consultant, Data and Analytics MiQ
Attention is a scarce resource. Research by Dentsu reveals that only 1/3 of ads receive users’ full attention. Entirely unseen ads sit at the other end of the scale, but nuances in the way we are exposed to ads (e.g. using multiple devices simultaneously or being focused on other content on a web page) and the resulting impact on ad effectiveness have created a spectrum of partially seen or heard ads.
So what is attention?
Dubbed ‘viewability on steroids’, attention is a promising innovation that has the potential to resolve the challenge of accounting for the quality of ad exposure in ad effectiveness measurements. According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), attention is ‘a consumer looking at or listening to an ad at the time they were exposed to it,’ with time a typical base measure.
Eye-tracking software, mouse motion, or predictive models form the basis of popular attention measurement methodologies.
Topical metric
A difficult economy has thrown ad spends under scrutiny for many brands. As marketers try to get more bang for their buck, a focus on figuring out the most effective channels, formats, and campaigns has made measurement center stage.
While clicks and views support status quo measurement, marketers are constantly exploring new metrics that can present a more realistic view of user engagement and tie this directly to business outcomes. That’s where attention comes in.
Working with attention
The impact of entirely seen or unseen ads may be clear, but did you know that partially seen ads, including those that receive passive audience attention, can boost sales?
Consider the compound effects of hearing an ad while scrolling on your phone. This tells us that reducing ad-avoidance and focusing on ads that receive less attention than benchmark impact levels may be more impactful for advertisers than maximising full-on attention.
One consideration that is always top of mind for marketers is the effectiveness of multichannel performance relative to pricing. In advertising, the primary currency used to transact media is based on audience impressions or reach. The cost per thousand impressions (CPM) varies between channels — display ads, Connected TV, and YouTube all have different CPMs — meaning it isn’t always the right metric for comparing the effectiveness of ads.
Instead, attention can be used to holistically determine user engagement and creative performance across channels and strategies. This can be used to justify ad spends based on true business impact, with the level of reporting sophistication offered by attention metrics reshaping how marketers plan, optimize, and measure digital campaigns.
“Moving forward, brands cannot afford to rely on subjectivity in their measurement. Instead, they must acknowledge sophisticated measures of attention based on actual consumer behavior, and how these measures drive incremental profit, increased acquisition and retention.”
— ‘The State Of Attention: Where Is Attention-Led Advertising Going?’, Ian Liddicoat, Forbes, May 2023
While metrics like viewability and impressions may be statistically good enough for evaluating the effectiveness of a campaign, they are simplified KPIs and do not provide an accurate indication of how many eyeballs or ears the ad is truly receiving.
Furthermore, there is no common metric for performance comparison across different channels (cross-channel measurement). Brands that will win the battle for attention will be those who can clearly understand attention metrics, use them to holistically measure multi-channel campaigns, and derive unique insights that are proven to improve business impact. The era of attention intelligence is upon us.
Check out part 2 of our mini-series: Attention part 2: Practical implementation with optimization models!
Pavan is a technical consultant in MiQ’s Bengaluru-based capabilities team. Outside of work, you’ll find him playing something — whether that’s chess, cricket or FIFA!
