In-Store Scenes in Ads Drives 3% Sales Impact for US Retailers

• Walgreens leads the pack in producing creative that drives attention (63% Attention Potential. The Walgreens ads often featured customers interacting with employees in store settings. 
• Ads that immediately began in store with employees interacting with customers created 19% more Attention Potential (-2.4% sales impact) than those that opened on live action scenes. Advertisers should balance branding with attention-grabbing creative elements.
• Early branding is important, but creative that started with just the logo captured 14% less Potential Attention and 18% less Mean Attention than those that opened on live action scenes. Advertisers should balance branding with attention-grabbing creative elements. 

Higher Ad Attention Drives Sales
Synthetic AI testing is based on the world’s largest attention-tested content dataset including 18 million participant sessions and 90K+ ads tested, the AI model attributes an Attention Potential score (1-100) where every point of Attention Potential gained drives +0.3% campaign sales lift (presented at 2024’s ARF Marketing Analytics Accelerator and MADFest London).

High Performance Drivers    
Walgreens led the pack with the highest average Attention Potential score at 63.8. Walgreens creatives were the most effective at capturing and retaining attention.  

Keys to Developing Emotional Engagement 

Beyond simply capturing attention, an ad's ability to elicit positive emotions is crucial for fostering positive brand associations. Target's Happiness Index stood out significantly at 67.0, indicating its creatives resonated strongly with viewers on an emotional level. 

Walgreens achieved an even higher score of 68.6, bolstering its position at the top of this list with respect to average audience attention and engagement. 

The indices for Confusion and Contempt offered insights into potentially negative audience responses. The retailer that recorded the highest "Confusion Index" (56.81) also held the highest Contempt Index (56.8). One possible reason is that their creative elements were too complex and the ads featured too many scenes for such a short duration.

Don’t Start the Ad with the Brand and Nothing Else 

Establishing brand identity quickly and effectively is essential for driving recall and association, but retailers that used logos in their opening scenes all underperformed those that focused on their employees or customers first. 

Instead, those retailers should consider starting with shots of people and potentially including a persistent logo in a corner of the ad or integrating branding into the video itself.  

On the flip side, Best Buy had a much longer average "Time to Earliest Branding" at 2.84 seconds, suggesting its creatives could benefit from featuring branding earlier. 

Realeyes Average Focal Points revealed the number of elements competing for viewers' attention. Kroger led with 1.82 focal points, closely followed by Wayfair, and CVS, while Target had the lowest number of focal points at 1.16. While a higher number of focal points doesn't necessarily equate to better performance, it suggests a need to balance visual complexity with clarity of messaging. 

Ads That Performed Best 

Target's 'Treecep Curls' ad immediately opens in a retail store decorated for the holiday season with three co-workers talking about “Black Friday deals” offering up to 50% off on tech, toys, and more. Branding is prominent throughout the video. The final frames explicitly state the promotion and showcase the store's logo. 

Similarly, the second highest scoring ad based on Attention was a Walgreens ad that focuses on a man walking in a store with prominent Walgreens branding.

Some of the lowest performing creatives on Attention were singled out for having loud music with the suggestion that a new mix or lowering the volume would improve the scores. 

Optimizing for Attention & Engagement 

Simply capturing initial attention is insufficient; sustaining engagement, eliciting positive emotions, establishing clear brand identity, and minimizing confusion are all essential for driving success in the attention economy. 

Brands like Walgreens and Target are clearly demonstrating best practices in many of these areas, showcasing their ability to capture attention, sustain engagement, and resonate emotionally with viewers. Conversely, brands like Walmart and Kroger have opportunities to refine their creative strategies and messaging to improve attention capture, emotional connection, and overall brand impact. The grand total average for the analysis presents an industry benchmark, however, the metrics point to a considerable range, suggesting that many retailers could leverage these insights to optimize their advertising efforts. 

Methodology