Commentary

Are You Measuring Attention Properly?

The topic of attention appears to be gaining steam.  It was the center of the conversation at a recent Insider Summit, and it has carried over to many other meetings the last few weeks.  It’s not new, but it does feel like people are paying more, well, attention to the topic than they were previously.

First off, attention is primarily a media metric that factors in creative, content and context.  Attention can be captured by delivering some form of content in a creative fashion, and within the right context -- or it can be delivered completely out-of-context and appear jarring.  Without properly capturing attention, you can achieve almost nothing else.

The worry for media planners when it comes to attention is the variables out of their control.  Of course, great media planners anticipate as many variables as they can. They can plan for content and context with the proper media buy.  They can also plan for creative by purchasing the best unit sizes and locations.  The variables lie in the price of a fixed placement versus more run-of-site or run-of-network placements that come at a lower price.

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In the case of video, planners can purchase guaranteed views, or they can pay lower prices for less guarantees.  All in, a planner can manage many of the variables required to deliver success, which simply confirms that attention is a media metric.

If you manage the buy properly, it does come down to whether the message was seen and resonated.  That happens because of the creative, but every good planner will have seen the creative in advance of the buy and factored that in.  Compelling creative, in the right placement, will capture attention quickly.  Weaker creative will not. 

If you can’t capture attention early in the funnel, your chances of generating engagement fall off a cliff.  You are asking a media buy to do something it cannot do on its own.  If it did, then you would simply see brands tossing their logo everywhere and assuming that frequency of exposure will do the work.

In the case of weak creative, great media planners can pursue more interruptive forms of advertising to get the attention they are looking for, but interruptions can have a negative impact as well.  Too much interruption can create a negative brand view at worst and be a waste of money at best, because the audience tends to zone out and ignore a message once they know it’s not valuable to them.  Great media planners know the optimal frequency of exposure and factors that into their plans, knowing (as the late great Kenny Rogers once said) “When to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.”   If that audience is tuned out or not applicable, you don’t waste money trying to capture their attention again.

Attention is an important metric in today’s model of advertising because it’s something you can control with a good media plan.  We don’t have many things we can control, so when we find something we can, we work with it!

1 comment about "Are You Measuring Attention Properly?".
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  1. Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, October 2, 2024 at 3:04 p.m.

    Cory, you make some very fair points. Bu in most cases the buyer doesn't have a true measure of ad attentiveness to work with. In the case of TV, attentiveness is not close to being a standard time selling metric and all you get are greatly inflated "impression" numbers which draw no distinctions between program content, ad clutter variations, demographics, etc. The same issue applies to digital video and display buys as well as to buys in audio or print media.

    As a rule, when a media planner thinks of ad attentiveness, it's done in a broad way----by time of day, by type of content, by the degree of ad clutter, etc. So with this in mind,a planner may specify thatthe TV time buyer place most or all of the brand's bets in  dramas as these usually get higher ad attention scores than reality fare or sitcoms. Unfortunately most national TV buying is done on a corporate basis---mainly in upfront volume dixcount deals. This means that like it or not, the sellers will include all sorts of placements in all sorts of shows if you want the lowest CPM---which is how the client bean counters evaluate the buyers. So attentiveness gies mostly by the window in most of these negotiations.

    Another problem---again, mostly in TV---concerns the attitude of the sellers. If a brand is able to go it alone and buy its own TV---with attention being a serious consideration---it willo, of neccessity, want certain shows and try to avoid others. Seeing this the seller will respond by upping its CPM for the shows in demand. Indeed, the CPM hike will probbaly exceed the gain in attentiveness, meaning th,at you get fewer, not more eyeballs focused on your commercial as a result.

    The digital situation is equally complex and here page "views" are often used along with time-on-screen as surrogates for attentivenss. While this is valid---ta point---that's about all as you are not really getting a tight fix on true attentiveness---only a calculated guess. And a page "view" on one website may not be equal to a page " view" on another---even if dwell time and presence-on-screen as well as other variables are laid in.

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