The concept of attention and attention metrics in advertising isn’t new but is becoming more of a focus with an industry-wide push for measurement tools to understand whether consumers are absorbing advertising messages.
There are more studies being done, publishers jumping on board and models becoming more advanced especially with the developments in machine learning and AI.
What exactly are Attention Metrics?
Attention is an IAB-recognised metric that measures how engaged or focused an individual user is on an advertisement.
Attention Metrics are gaining in popularity as marketers seek out more accurate ways to measure ad performance building upon traditional metrics such as viewability to better understand the success and impact of our advertising. Even though your ad might be viewable, this doesn’t actually mean your audience is paying attention.
Attention is a compilation of measurements that signal interest and engagement including engagement metrics, conversion rates, bounce rates, completion rates, click-through rates and more.
This combination of multiple metrics helps to provide a more comprehensive view of ad performance and, therefore, attention.
Why are Attention Metrics important?
For bottom of the funnel activity, we are able to measure on metrics such as purchases, leads, ROAS and revenue and are able to understand the direct impact of activity on the bottom line. However, when it comes to awareness activity, we traditionally measure based on metrics such as impressions, reach and views.
But how do we know the quality of these views and if someone is actually paying attention to what they are seeing?
As advertising becomes more fragmented, how do we know the quality and the impact of the ads that we are serving to our audience and how they are contributing to longer-term objectives? This is becoming even more important as the average audience attention is stretched (or strained) by the increasing the number of devices and screens we consume (often at the same time!)
Research is showing that measurement and optimisation based on attention metrics are resulting in upper-funnel and lower-funnel lift and brand outcomes. Higher dwell times are linked to the likelihood to choose and recall a brand’s advertising (which makes sense!)
“I see attention metrics as an evolution beyond viewability. More and more high viewability placements that are out there today don’t really deliver very much attention or outcomes for advertisers. The biggest step forward that’s going to come from attention metrics is replacing viewability with a better measure of media quality.” – Marc Guldimann, CEO of Adelaide
How do you measure Attention Metrics?
There is no standardised measurement for attention with different partners developing their own models. However, the approach and types of methodologies and data points used are similar:
Eye-tracking – this is an opt-in methodology using a select group of participants to understand which parts of the page they are focusing on, including ad placement. This can be combined with participant surveys to assess ad recall and purchase intent.
Machine-learning – the data captured from the participants is used to train algorithms, enabling predictions to be made on the types of media content and campaign creatives that will resonate with audiences.
Additional proxy signals – traditional metrics are still important as the models are enhanced further with metrics such as viewability, time in view, dwell time, contextual alignments, click-through rate, scroll-depth and more.
So how can we buy towards attention?
There are a number of third-party companies including Adelaide, Lumen, IAS Quality Attention and Amplified Intelligence who are partnering with media publishers to offer attention capabilities, while companies such as Playground XYZ (aka GumGum) have developed their own attention measurement technology that is available across their digital offering.
Now rather than delivering and measuring against impressions and viewability, this gives us the opportunity to optimise digital activity in real-time towards attention and include these metrics in our post campaign reporting to understand how activity performed. This technology can also be used to optimise creative during a campaign by understanding how an audience is viewing the creative and as a result what improvements can be made.
And it is not just players in the digital space that are talking about attention, with traditional media partners now also looking into how they can utilise attention metrics. Outdoor company QMS have partnered with Amplified Intelligence to understand attention across their different formats and are using these studies to help advise brands on the best formats to achieve their marketing objectives and to help make creative recommendations across different placements.
If you are interested in learning more about Attention Metrics, Connected Media can help! Our team can evaluate whether Attention Metrics are something that you should be exploring further and what partners we can work with to make this happen.