Making Attention Actionable: How Marketers Should Harness the Power of Attention
Attention is a complex topic in digital advertising. Throughout the past year, a vague concept of attention has quickly skyrocketed to the forefront of marketing strategies — despite there not being a singular solution to harness it or even an agreed-upon definition to characterize it.
We’ve been closely watching the steep rise of attention, aiming to study and define this emerging digital advertising priority. After conducting a series of research studies to better understand attention and how it ties to business results, we crafted an evidence-based definition and a methodological recipe to provide digital marketing professionals with actionable data to optimize attention for better results.
Defining Attention in Digital Advertising
Attention is a measure of whether or not an ad is resonating with consumers and likely to drive results. We found that an ad must be tied to results, like sales, conversions, or brand impact, in order to determine that attention has been achieved.
But how can marketers get their ads to capture consumer attention?
Media quality is a critical piece in driving attention. While human biases and preferences play a role in how attention is directed, it still remains critical for marketers to find a personalized, holistic suite of metrics that help them measure and optimize toward higher consumer attention. There are three key media signals that can predict if an impression is likely to lead to attention and results: Visibility, Situation, and Interaction.
These signals provide actionable insight on attention while simultaneously allowing marketers to implement optimization strategies to achieve better attention now.
Attention signal 1: Visibility
Visibility signals are the key starting points to measuring consumer attention. If an ad isn’t meeting basic viewability standards, then it will be impossible to achieve optimal time-in-view or other metrics needed in order to gauge attention.
Research from IAS backs up these claims. In a study we recently administered in partnership with Catalina, we wanted to understand the link between Visibility measures, like viewability and time-in-view, and in-store sales for a major CPG brand. The link that we found between viewability and results was undeniable. In-view ads tripled return on ad spend (ROAS) for the CPG brand compared to not-in-view placements, with a 180% increase in incremental ROAS.
Time-in-view showed similarly compelling results. In the same study, we found a sweet spot for time-in-view for advertisers aiming to drive both incremental sales and ROI. While ads that remained in-view for more than 11 seconds drove the highest percentage of incremental sales, it was the ads in-view between three and 10 seconds that hit the sweet spot: they were highest on the incremental index — driving the most ROI for the CPG brand compared to both shorter and longer time-in-view ranges.
Thanks to these insights, we were able to demonstrate the massive impact that Visibility alone has on campaign performance. After all, if a campaign isn’t optimized for viewability measures, it will be impossible for consumers to resonate with your brand’s messaging.
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Attention signal 2: Situation
The environment in which an ad’s impressions are served has an enormous impact on ad performance and consumer receptivity. Situation signals describe the environment in which impressions are served, which includes measuring the number of ads on a page, the percent share of voice (SOV) an ad has on a page relative to other content, and the relevance between the ad messaging and the surrounding content.
The single best place for a brand to be seen is alongside content that matches their ideal consumer’s interests. As part of our series of attention studies, we wanted to understand what impact brand safe situations have on conversions. We found a colossal 233% increase in conversion rate for brand safe impressions compared to those that were not brand safe, showing that consumers resonate with ads much more when they’re placed in brand safe environments.
We also found that contextually relevant placement situations have a massive impact on consumers. In an experiment we conducted in partnership with Tobii Pro and HP, we found that consumers were four times more likely to remember the contextually relevant ad. What’s more, purchase intent grew by 14% among consumers who viewed the in-context ad, along with increases in brand favorability.
Simply put, the environment in which ads run is a critical driver of success for marketers. It’s pivotal to take advantage of capabilities that help ensure your ads are running in safe, suitable, and relevant environments.
Attention signal 3: Interaction
Human interaction tells marketers valuable information about consumer attention. As part of our attention model, we’ve defined Interaction signals as indicators of consumer activity in the presence of ads. These signals help identify human preference and measure activity like scrolling and where the consumer’s gaze and fixation is on the page.
In our same eye-tracking study conducted with Tobii Pro measuring the performance of HP ads, we measured consumer eyesight to tangibly understand the Interaction signal. We found that consumers viewed contextually relevant ads first and for a longer period of time than those out-of-context, helping us understand consumer fixation.
In another analysis, we used eye-tracking to dive deeper into the link between context and attention. We tested an ad running in the FIFA World Cup with both contextually relevant content, like sports, and non-contextually aligned content, including politics and travel. This research determined that URLs with content most aligned to the campaign generate higher interaction compared to other content categories.
As the third component of our data-backed attention recipe, Interaction gives a greater picture of consumer fixation, over time helping advertisers optimize toward supply where engagement is historically higher.
Bottom line
The holistic Visibility, Situation, and Interaction approach to attention helps advertisers drive campaign performance with consumer attention at the forefront. Through the power of actionable data for measurement and optimization, marketers can understand the full picture of attention and find personalized ways to maximize it for better business results.
Marketers, attention is yours to harness. You just need the right strategy to get it.
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