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!