Dentsu International has
quietly begun to integrate so-called attention metrics into both its media planning and buying systems and has begun transacting media buys based on it, the agency’s Chief Investment Officer
disclosed during an Advertising Research Foundation panel discussion on Wednesday.
“Yes, we’ve tested. Yes, we’ve seen the results -- but now we’re actually
planning, optimizing and buying against it,” Cara Lewis said during the panel discussing the role of attention metrics during the ARF’s Audiencexscience conference.
Lewis
said the deployment follows “three-plus years” of testing attention metrics from more than a dozen suppliers “across different platforms and devices.”
She
said the agency has already integrated the data into “a tool that we plan against,” and has been working with clients on a “brand-by-brand basis” to deploy it into actual media
buys.
She said the tool enables Dentsu to plan both “incremental [audience] reach” as well as “attentive [audience] reach” for various media options.
While she did not disclose the names of specific media suppliers that Dentsu has begun making attention-based media buys with, she said the agency is “actually transacting against
it” in “the linear space.”
She specifically singled out out-of-home media suppliers and said Dentsu is working with them to figure out “how do we push
attention in out-of-home?”
The disclosure came during a panel discussion featuring a data presentation from a Meta research executive showing the company’s studies on
attention across different Facebook formats and user devices.
The panel also featured OMD Global Chief Strategy Officer Christina Hanson, who said her agency is also actively
testing, developing and leaning into the deployment of various attention metrics.