Three Steps to Success with Attention AI

This article is the third part of a series of posts that explore how AI-powered synthetic attention data opens up the possibility of greater creative effectiveness at scale. They are foundational to our contribution to the WARC "Guide to Attention," for WARC members. 

In our previous pieces, we discussed how and why synthetic attention data grew in importance and how it will be a core component of many campaigns going forward.

In this piece, we will provide guidance on how to maximize use of attention AI to drive results. 

1. Build confidence with synthetic attention. Creative effectiveness is no longer exclusive to the ivory tower of more expensive, slower, human-based market research, usually reserved for a small number of hero ads. The heroes, mid-tail and long-tail of ads all contribute to impact and must be managed to performance. 

To take advantage of this, advertisers should create learning agendas for how to better harness synthetic AI. They should also create proofs of concept that score large numbers of ads. Then validate scientifically those metrics for relationships with key business outcomes such as sales lift. Quantitative is important, and so, too, is qualitative experience, resulting in intuition about the outputs, strengths and weaknesses of synthetic attention. Its ease and ubiquity will force advertising leaders to reimagine creative performance, analytics and workflow.

2. Establish Systems and Workflow for Creative Performance
Brand and performance advertising are blurring. Adopters of synthetic attention tend to bridge the silos of media and creative data and decision-making better. With synthetic attention serving as a sales performance proxy for brand advertising, it’s important to manage these ads with the same inclusion and precision as direct response.

Creative production gains a signal to optimize toward the same goals that media activation seeks to achieve: sales. Media activation gains a signal in which to better manage the creatives within their overall toolset, and report more meaningful closed-loop learnings back to creative.

3. Engage Brand Champions

Identifying key champions and sponsors who are willing to experiment and take some moderate risk is the best way to succeed with synthetic attention and creative performance inside a large brand advertiser or supporting agency. A few well-publicized successes can win the hearts and minds of stakeholders, and then trigger a groundswell of adoption leading to enterprise ad effectiveness.

Remember, attention AI is the path to sales lift, at scale, potentially for any ad.The advertisers and agencies that embrace attention AI benefit from real-time analysis and decision-making, informing choices though an ad’s lifecycle that drive increased ad effectiveness.