Attention Is the Future for Digital Ad Measurement
Being able to measure the effectiveness of online advertising beyond digital metrics is something the industry has been battling with since its inception. To date, the focus of that measurement has been the concept of viewability.
However, it’s hardly a secret that viewability is a deeply flawed answer to the problem related to digital ad measurement.
Challenges in digital ad measurement remain around defining standards and addressing less scrupulous publishers known to cram smaller ads into web pages simply to satisfy viewability metrics. This has left many premium publishers feeling that they have been effectively tarred with the same brush, and facing reduced inventory rates as a result.
Viewability has provided advertisers and publishers with a benchmark for calculating the cost of digital inventory, albeit one that causes conjecture for the aforementioned reasons. Some of the key drivers of viewability (format size or page position, for example) can actually have a negative impact on attention levels. The challenge also remains of proving that people are actually paying attention to an ad.
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Implementing a Viable Metric
As an industry, we’ve been looking for a replacement for viewability, and much talk has centered around the power of being able to measure Attention. On a basic level, we know that advertisers need consumers’ attention to build a brand and sell products – how else can they influence behavior and choice?
The reality is that “traditional” metrics like viewability and CTR don’t actually give us those guarantees.
As recent research from Google clearly shows, as many as 50% of all clicks on mobile ads are accidental, which highlights the reality of true consumer engagement.
Until recently, much of the talk around attention has been hard to quantify and pin down, but some cornerstone research over the past year has started to reveal exactly how powerful attention actually is. This is allowing the industry to finally flesh out what the so-called Attention Economy may look like, and how it could well represent the future for digital ad measurement.
The Power of Attention
For example, research conducted by Dentsu International has given some of the most comprehensive insights into this, including showing that attention is three times better at predicting outcomes than viewability. As a result, this year we are finally starting to see a shift in thinking from advertisers as they transition away from using viewability as a metric to plan, buy and measure media and instead put their focus on using attention. This is enabling them to start to tackle some of the key business challenges that marketers have been facing around justifying ad spend and ultimately helping them to improve both strategy and targeting. Attention as a metric helps us get much closer as an industry to driving true business results.
So how can we drive attention? Our experience shows that driving attention breaks down into four key areas, and these are where advertisers need to be looking closely.
Quality of Media
The starting point is the most obvious: time. The amount of time an ad is actually in view is one of the most important drivers of attention – both video and display ads benefit hugely from quality time in view. Having a deeper understanding of this seemingly most basic of concepts means all those involved in the digital ad buying ecosystem can work together to drive high user engagement supported by quality content, which ultimately leads to a slower scroll speed and, as a result, a higher average time in view.
Ad Experience
Secondly, we know that when ads are forced on consumers they gain more attention compared with ads that are placed either in or around content, as these ads can be easily skipped over or ignored. However, we also now know that when an ad gains earned attention (rather than forced), this has a significant impact on accepted brand lift metrics. This happens regardless of whether the consumer views the ad for 2 seconds or 20 seconds.
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Creative
The industry has always been aware of the importance of creativity on ad effectiveness, and a number of studies have been done on this in the past. What we now also know is just how important that creativity is within the Attention Economy framework in driving consumer attention. Good creative can improve recall of an ad, and we know well that ⅔ of media effectiveness is driven by the creative. So now more than ever, brands need to be sure they are really investing in the look and feel of their ads and ensuring these resonate with their target audience and are customized and optimized based on format and device.
Relevance
If you want to drive consumer attention, context is crucial. Placing ads around relevant content not only produces a better experience for the consumer, it also drives attention. As part of our own research we have found that properly contextualized ads can produce an uplift of attentive seconds per 1,000 of 13%.
By focusing on these four areas – time, choice, creative, and relevance – within their campaign planning, advertisers and publishers can work together to improve both the ad experience for consumers and the effectiveness and performance of digital advertising for all parties involved.
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