Commentary

Consumer Attention Metrics Now Used To Optimize Campaigns

Parsec Media recently released a performance tool that measures in real-time consumer attention given to campaigns, among other metrics.

The measurement platform, Adelaide, creates a new business for Parsec Media. And with the new tool, Adam Heimlich steps in as president of Adelaide, reporting to Marc Guldimann, CEO of Parsec Media.

Among many metrics, the tool will highlight how much money agencies have wasted in “under exposure and over exposure” of the advertisements, Guldimann said.

For now the platform analyzes desktop and mobile display and video, as well as direct deals and programmatic. In the future it will support walled gardens such as Facebook, Google and Snapchat, as well as OTT and CTV, and outdoor advertising.

Horizon Media has signed on to become one of the first agencies to use the platform.

“We’ve partnered with the Adelaide team across a couple of clients, although the product and campaigns only recently launched in the past week or so,” said Donnie Williams, chief digital officer at Horizon Media, noting that the benefits for brand marketers are significant. “This is the evolution of legacy reach and frequency metrics by now introducing time and consumer attention.”

advertisement

advertisement

Williams said the bet Horizon is making is that time has been a critical missing element, and one that is driving marketing. 

Adelaide now gives Horizon Media “a compelling line of sight into the impact of time and attention related to consumer exposure and environment or context,” he said.

Horizon Media isn’t the only media agency using the platform. Scott Konopasek, media director at Noble People, said, “I’m a big believer in an attention metric, rather than ad delivery.”

Konopasek said Noble People will initially use the Adelaide platform to measure sales and online sign-ups for a fitness boutique to link attention to revenue. The campaign launches on Wednesday and will begin with display and then move into online video.

“As we get data, probably in about four weeks, we will see how attention correlates with the sales,” he said. “… We expect the attention measurement to show the differences in legacy in optimization and performance.”

The platform begins by measuring viewability, but extends into duration, meaning analyzing how many seconds the ad is seen on the page. Then it measures “coverage and clutter,” the size of the ad and how many other ads appear on the page.

A proprietary JavaScript tag tracks coverage, duration, clutter, and dozens of other attention metrics from every session. The attention given to each session is aggregated by user and compared with a cross-screen audience graph to calculate attentive reach to target.

A representative sample of the target audience is surveyed for top-of-funnel brand impact, and the platform iteratively models the relationship between attention and lift. Insights into frequency, cadence, creative, and media value are displayed in a real-time dashboard. Machine-learning predicts awareness at the individual level and makes recommendations to improve lift per dollar.

Daily delivery of under/over-exposed audiences to advertisers’ demand-side platforms (DSPs) is also available.

About a year and a half ago, customers began asking Parsec about using its technology without the associated media. At one point, Parsec was strictly a media business. The development of Adelaide resulted in the decoupling of the measurement, optimization, and survey verification technology.   

2 comments about "Consumer Attention Metrics Now Used To Optimize Campaigns".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, May 7, 2019 at 7:58 a.m.

    Laurie, time -on- screen is hardly a measure of attentiveness to a digital ad, especially when there's lots of other stuff on the same page---ads, editorial content. All time-on screen tells you is that one ad has a better chance of maybe being seen than another ad which is on-screen for a shorter duration.

  2. Adam Heimlich from Adelaide, May 8, 2019 at 12:02 a.m.

    Thank you for pointing that out, Ed. Because of the facts you cite, Adelaide goes much further than duration to calculate an attention metric that varies with unaided recall. It's a proprietary weighting of durations by coverage and clutter factors, based on research by our sister company Parsec and the esteemed researcher Karen Nelson-Field of the Centre for Amplified Intelligence. For years, we've iteratively adjusted our weightings to improve the alignment of our Attention Units with observed results. So when we say "attention," please be assured we're talking about empirical quantities that reliably vary with brand lift. Reach out anytime if you'd like to run and test: adam@adelaidelift.com 

Next story loading loading..