• by Micheal P. Gumbert , April 29, 2025

Medtronic’s Senior Paid Media Specialist writes “Maybe attention is something deeper than simply the ability to recall a brand, paying attention allows someone to see how our brand might be able to impact their lives.”

Attention …the ultimate prize for any marketer. Not just getting our message in front of our audience but, then knowing they paid attention to that message. But there are two questions that come up about attention, the first being how you measure attention or even if we can actually measure attention. I can tell you from experience that people can have entire conversations and yet not pay attention once, but it was not until I asked a question that I realized they were not paying attention. The next question is related to the first, do we as marketers have any responsibility in protecting people’s attention span by distracting them less?

When I say “attention” what comes to mind for you? I’ll be honest I have never thought about the definition of attention. I never had to. So, I had to look it up. “The act of listening to, looking at, and thinking about something or somebody carefully,” is what the Oxford English Dictionary gave me when I looked. That brings us to our first problem, because how exactly do we measure that? Is it the “carefully” that is causing most of the problems for measurement of attention? Do we really care if someone is carefully listening to our messages or is it good enough for them to have paid enough attention that they remember our message and want to learn more? If remembering our messages is the same as paying attention, we have brand lift and brand recall studies that can tell us how effective we are in getting people to remember and recall our brands. But maybe attention is something deeper than simply the ability to recall a brand, paying attention allows someone to see how our brand might be able to impact their lives

All this is part of a larger ethical question for us as marketers. With ad inventory being introduced almost everywhere, trying to capture as many eyeballs and ears as possible. Here is the question: should we be doing that? Is there an argument to be made for interrupting people less often and in fewer places that could lead to better results for businesses and people alike? I think there is. I will go one step further and say we should be making that argument. Allowing people to enjoy the media they engage with, with fewer distractions would draw more audiences and frankly annoy people less. By potentially annoying people less you are not starting from a negative for your brand. At the same time people would be better able to pay attention, meaning less money needed that can be used elsewhere.

Yes, attention is the ultimate prize for marketers. First, we as an industry need to figure out what exactly we mean when we say attention and with that, we can figure out how to measure attention for our marketing. Then beyond that we need to be doing it in an ethical and responsible manner from the start and not after the fact. Does anyone actually remember what I was actually talking about?

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