Oh the irony. The true value of attention as a KPI for advertising is underestimated because our industry doesn’t pay sufficient attention to its underlying potential, writes Sebastian Schindler
The term “attention” has been a mainstay of the digital advertising industry for years, not least due to an infamous Microsoft Canada study which proclaimed in 2015 that the human attention span has not only shrunk significantly in recent years, but is now also shorter than that of a goldfish.
“Infamous” because most of the information I’ve presented just now (and which you find utterly compelling, admit it) has little to no scientific support.
Microsoft Canada did not conduct any such empirical research themselves (but rather quoted another source). Goldfish don’t have particularly short attention spans. There isn’t any compelling evidence that human attention spans get shorter. And the very concept of trying to quantify average human “attention spans”, which are highly task-dependent, doesn’t make an awful lot of sense either.
By doing a tiny bit of digging, it’s relatively simple to come to these conclusions, especially because others have already done a fabulous job in busting these myths: BBC News’ Simon Maybin for example, or PolicyViz’s Jonathan Schwabish. But very few people do the digging, instead happily building upon the hearsay and spreading the misleading message.
Most recently at the Newsworks Effectiveness Summit, BBH’s Richard Madden ran into the trap, swiftly followed by the great Raymond Snoddy in this very publication.[advert position=”left”]
The true value of attention (which, in its broadest sense, can be defined as the selectivity of cognitive processing) as a KPI for advertising is often underestimated because we as an industry, ironically, don’t pay sufficient attention to its underlying potential.
To a certain degree, this is understandable. Over the past few years, ad validation metrics such as viewability have dominated the headlines.
It took the industry years to even grasp the concept of a baseline requirement for ad delivery detached from effectiveness, and the endless discussions around appropriate pixel and time thresholds (50/1, 30/1, 100/1, 100/5, whatever) didn’t really help speed up things.
Discussing if and how to measure attention to something turns out to be rather difficult if we can’t even agree on the “something”. The most recent JICWEBS Town Hall has shown that the viewability debate continues to mature, however, and there is hope that this might open the door for attention measurement, its obvious effectiveness companion.
At Inskin, we have been interested in visual focused attention (it’s important to be specific here) for years, and the key reason for this is the piling mountain of evidence that highlights its value to the advertising community. Based on our own research as well as studies from Lumen, Newsworks, British Gas and others, we have learned that:
– Digital advertising’s viewability rate is bad at predicting attention, unlike in-view time.
– Attention to display advertising drives traditional brand metrics such as awareness and recall.
– Attention to display advertising positively correlates with conversions / sales.
– Attention to display advertising is extremely scarce: it is estimated that only 1 in 10 served ad impressions (12%) is being looked at. This number drops to 4% (!) when only taking ads into account that are being attended to for at least 1 second.
– Factors such as the environment in which the advertising is placed directly affect attention: for example, ads placed in premium environments, such as news publications, are more likely to be looked at than those in non-premium sites.
What is exciting about visual attention measurement is both the rapid development of the eye tracking technology (it seems to be getting more accurate and more scalable by the day) and the plethora of research questions unlocked by its advancement.
In collaboration with eye tracking specialist Lumen, we are currently working on a new project that investigates if and how exposure to certain types of digital display formats influences users’ receptivity to subsequent ad exposures – an exciting topic, given its potential to help optimise impression distribution strategies.
And the application of attention to advertising doesn’t end here: as a platform- and channel-agnostic metric, (predicted) attention could be an important contributor to filling the cross-media measurement gap, arguably one of the industry’s biggest pain points.
Yes, there is plenty of work to do. The technology is still maturing. A considerable number of variables that influence attention to advertising remain largely unexplored. Definitional frameworks need to be created.
And the digital we-must-directly-measure-every-single-impression warriors (I’m convinced that the “census mindset” is the single biggest obstacle for the advancement of brand advertising measurement, just saying) will cringe and moan and throw a tantrum the moment someone mentions sample-based statistical projections.
And yet, I firmly believe that by studying users’ attention, the (not just digital) ad industry can develop invaluable planning and buying intelligence that helps us make our brand advertising activities more impactful.
It’s a hugely interesting research area and has the power to generate catchy headlines purely based on merit – without the need for relying on goldfish or pseudoscientific research. Keep your eyes open and watch this space.
Sebastian Schindler is global insight lead, Inskin Media
