Attention plus brand lift is the new gold standard for brand measurement
Opinion
Great advertising builds great brands, but not all great brands build great advertising. That’s why advertisers need both attention and brand lift to understand the effectiveness of their ads.
In a multiscreen age, the race for consumer eyeballs has never been fiercer. In the UK alone, the digital attention economy had an estimated consumer spend value of £21bn last year, according to PwC, as Brits used half of their free time to interact with digital content.
Amid a saturated online market, it makes sense that advertisers are placing newfound emphasis on attention metrics. If we can use biometric and interactive data signals (eg. eye-tracking or scroll rate) to judge the highest-quality websites, placements and audiences, we have the basis of a powerful system of ad measurement for a cookieless future.
Yet, with all the progress made, there’s room to aim higher.
Today’s attention metrics give us a strong understanding of the potential to engage consumers via quality, high-visibility placements. But to ensure this opportunity for good buying translates into an effective outcome, we need to combine attention measurement with brand-lift measurement.
Completing the attention circle
Brand lift is a crucial part of the attention formula because it speaks to the intersection between creative and placement that makes all great campaigns fly.
The best creative in the world will struggle if the placement and audience aren’t right; at the same time, the best placement in the world will fail if the creative doesn’t catch the user’s eye or fails to make a genuine connection with the consumer.
I’d be very surprised if the majority of the campaigns that generate higher-than-average attention scores actually manage to catch the attention of users. I’m not saying that all digital advertising is below par, but too much of it definitely falls short. I say this based on my general experience of browsing even the most premium websites.
This presents an amazing opportunity for brands to really stand out. Great advertising builds great brands, but not all great brands build great advertising.
That’s why advertisers need to be factoring in both attention and brand lift to understand the effectiveness of their ads. Attention indicates the opportunity to catch people’s eye, then brand-lift measurement tells us if the creative has really engaged the user and helped the brand tell their story effectively.
In short, brand lift is the yin to attention’s yang: you need both to complete the circle.
A creative renaissance
Armed with these combined insights, marketers gain a direct line of sight into whether their creative execution hit home — ie. if it was able to resonate and create a lasting impression on consumers.
This is crucial in an age when consumers are demanding genuinely captivating experiences from digital campaigns.
A report from VML Intelligence found that today’s digital audiences crave experiences that spark feelings of joy, wonder, magic or intrigue. Two-thirds of us want to be captivated by spectacular advertising, while 61% want brands to help provoke intense emotions and 63% prefer multisensory experiences.
An ever-evolving media landscape only intensifies the need to emotionally transport consumers. And from our experience at ShowHeroes, we can see that brands are taking steps to capitalise on it.
We’re seeing more advertisers move towards advanced, interactive features to enhance the creative experience in their digital campaigns. This includes anything from branded interactive players and voice-activated elements to scannable QR codes or custom editorial content to create the perfect contextual environment.
Brand lift is a crucial part of the attention formula, because it enables brands to better understand how these enhanced creative experiences and features can be delivered to engage consumers and drive the best outcomes, feeding into a growing creative renaissance in digital.
Steven Filler is UK country manager at ShowHeroes