The Attention Council recently held the Inaugural Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM) Salon, where members shared their approaches to attention metrics and discussed the role and value of attention metrics will play in the TV and video advertising markets now and in the future.
Sorin Patilinet, senior director of consumer insights at Mars, Incorporated, spoke about the ground in attention that Mars is breaking with the Agile Creative Expertise (ACE) tool, powered by Realeyes PreView.
He shared some of the most valuable learnings from ACE’s analysis of $200 million worth of Mars media investment in 20 months, across 25+ markets (and counting).
Key Takeaways
• High attention is a marker for high ad impact. This tracks with what we’ve always stated: without attention, there is no opportunity for impact.
• You must grab attention at the start. Advertisements that fail to grab attention at the start almost never regain it. Every second is a battle for attention, so you must lead with your strongest foot forward.
• Avoid building tension slowly. Tangential to the above, companies that treat their advertisements like movies where the payoff comes halfway through the creative will find they lose viewers before the payoff occurs. In movie theatres, you have a relatively captive audience. With advertisements, they can switch to anything else within seconds.
The ACE tool has produced incredible dividends for Mars, in some cases doubling sales impact.
The debate to define attention is necessary so those in advertising can align to produce better outcomes at scale -- for publishers, for advertisers, for agencies, for technology partners and, most importantly, for consumers.
Key Takeaways from CIMM Salon
- We are amidst a major hype cycle in attention measurement, yet the hype is justified because attention can greatly improve (if not fix) advertising metrics.
- Many people still conflate creative attention and media attention, as well as three different attention data types, such as: mechanical proxy data (i.e., clicks, keystrokes, video completion rates, viewability), actual human measurement (i.e., facial coding, brain scans and other biometric detection), and content/context detection (i.e., elements present in programming or ad creatives). This heightens confusion around attention and its related metrics.
- There is intrigue and disagreement over attention as a currency and as a preemptive signal to outcomes. Some veterans rightly point out that attention measurement is not necessarily a new phenomenon -- it's at the core of what advertisers have been seeking to solve for decades.
We do not believe there will be a single dominant winner in providing or standardizing attention metrics. There are many facets of attention, and some are more relevant to certain use cases and situations versus others. Successful adopters of attention metrics will have one commonality: integrating multiple sources and techniques to triangulate truth and drive better outcomes. Data interoperability and transparency is key and will define the leaders who provide attention metrics.
Ultimately, what matters is not theories around what is possible with attention, but the ability to drive better business outcomes and demonstrate that impact.
We’re grateful that Sorin could share with the Attention Council and the larger adland community how ACE (and therefore attention metrics) have proven a connection to behavioral and sales data.
