• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, October 9, 2023

Ads only work if people pay attention. KERV Interactive is looking to measure that attention in connected television (CTV) media by using something its chief revenue officer called "dynamic personalized scans."

"It is more difficult to achieve active attention metrics in connected TV than online video or digital media because the action does not allow marketers to measure the click," said Jay Wolff, CRO at KERV Interactive. “CTV is our next frontier for attention.”

The company has begun to measure active attention in online video, with the full launch of the product next month, but KERV Interactive wants to build a product to measure active attention metrics for CTV. 

KERV AI can change creatives and QR codes based on dynamic personalized triggers such as location, time of day, day of week, audiences, weather and more. Each of these touchpoints can reflect the “active attention” of a viewer, which measures opt-in viewer engagement across multiple touchpoints. 

Wolff said the company is still in the early stages of what active attention metrics really mean for CTV, but via a scan it can measure the active attention of a viewer in a sequential video ad that is served to a viewer who scanned a personalized QR on their TV screen.  

"We think the future is measuring attention across all screens," Wolff said. "CTV is the next frontier for us by creating a product in the market that leverages AI and automation."

The average TV ad captures 34% attention, according to TVision’s most recent State of CTV report. Advertisers will have the attention of CTV viewers for just more than 15 seconds during a typical 30-second ad, according to the data. 

Wolff believes a partnership between KERV and AI Digital -- a global programmatic consultancy leveraging advanced analytics, which allows advertisers to create and implement interactive campaigns -- could put the company that much closer to realizing its goal.

He said the technology opens the door to performance-based video by making it more transactional and by adding mid-funnel metrics, such as time spent with a piece of content or hovering over an object.

Video has been static and reach-based, whereas display and search are transactional.

Making creative work harder and smarter for KERV Interactive means identifying every object in the video and giving marketers the ability to optimize the content.

It offers a platform for video that allows advertisers to dynamically change the content in the video. Tiles with different offers are interchangeable through the entire video ad.

If the third 10-second tile showing someone admiring a car was the most interactive part in the video, for example, the marketer might move it up to the first tile. Or if the copy in the video talked about a sold-out product in a retail store, the platform could switch to another product in stock.

The company can measure attention through the interactivity of the tiles such as conversions and click-throughs, changing sequences within the video to optimize the ad.

Log-level data is measured and analyzed against an index. In one campaign, Lucid, a Cint Group Company, looked at brand lift based on the metrics for an Audi campaign using attention metrics that produced an increase to business results.

Interaction measures the total number of interactions and impression volume. Time spent measures the active time spent across users who engage and average of that over time. User intention score measures quality of interactions per engagement with the KERV video units.

“If you have a static 15-second or 30-second ad running on CTV in a favorite program on Peacock, why can’t we make that more interactive to drive better consumer attention,” said Matt Bayer, president at AI Digital.

The partnership, announced last week, allows advertisers with differentiated capabilities to create and implement interactive and automated campaigns that drive consumer purchase behavior across video and CTV.

Active attention metrics rely on triggers such as time spent with the ad and the quality and quantity of the interactions. This is how the companies identify attention to score interactive events and determine performance over time.

The metric is described as deterministic as interactivity occurs, for example, when someone needs to make a choice to opt in or make a purchase through the video.