• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 1, 2023

Integral Ad Science (IAS) on Monday will announce a partnership with Lumen Research that the companies believe will change the way digital advertising impressions are measured for attention-first advertising.

“Lumen Research is bringing new eye-tracking signals that are unique to the signals we have,” says Jeremy Kanterman, vice president of research and insights at Integral Ad Science (IAS).

The first-of-its-kind collaboration combines IAS's technology and actionable data with Lumen Research's expertise in eye-tracking. The outcome is a powerful tool to accurately track advertising impressions that captured attention.

The partnership expands the industry standard for attention measurement and offers valuable insights into consumer behavior.

The attention model built -- based on the research done by IAS developers -- fits into three categories: Visibility, Situation, and Interaction.

The eye-tracking signals from Lumen will be integrated into that framework. That signal, added to the IAS model, will measure the human focus that consumers have when looking at a screen.

Lumen’s eye-tracking signals measure the expected view and the expected dwell time for the participants in the panel. All participants opt in to the test and are paid for participation.

The technology follows the eyes of consumers when they look at the screen -- as well as how long someone is fixated on a specific image.

When campaigns are measured, because Lumen uses predictive models, the signals from the campaigns help to predict the signals based on the eye-tracking.

“Our attention framework was originally based on all the research based on research we did last year,” Kanterman says. “After talking with Lumen, we ran a proof-of-concept test with them to understand the relationship between our data and human signals.”

The study found a strong relationship between the two types of data signals. The data revealed that when ads were in view, the Lumen’s scores for the eye-tracking measurement were much higher for those impressions. The study showed the same results for time in view, and similar results for the advertiser’s strategy during the campaign.

Initial tests earlier this year with a major sports retailer looked at the relationship of IAS’ viewability and time-in-view data with Lumen’s attention data sets. The companies examined the impact of media quality and attention on the sports retailer’s advertising campaign running during a global sporting event.

IAS measured the attention of each ad received by combining IAS’s viewability data with Lumen’s focus data on eye-tracking. The results found that in-view ads amounted to 64 times higher attention than those that were not in-view.

The test also showed that ads with time-in-view rates longer than 15 seconds experienced the highest attention in the study. Context also played a critical role.

URLs with content most aligned to the campaign strategy generated attention 2.5 times higher for the advertised brand compared to other content categories.