• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 10 hours ago

Our attention span on screens is a big deal. But how much attention is there for the screens we do not hold in our hands?

National CineMedia figures there is more room to grow in this area.

The in-theater advertising company -- with deals in AMC Theatres, Cinemark and Regal, which run commercials before the film starts -- is expanding to other out-of-home and out-of-hand screens. 

It has bought Captivate Holdings, an out-of-home video network that has small to midsized screens in office buildings, lobbies and elevators -- ones that show short-duration content and commercial messaging in places where people wait in offices, walk, or take elevators. The reported value of the Captivate deal is $275 million.

In addition to its “Noovie,” a 20 to 30-minute program that runs just before the start of movies in theaters, National CineMedia also has screens in theater lobbies -- a total of 17,000 screens in more than 1,300 theaters. It will now add Captivate’s 48,000 digital screens.

Many OOH executives are concerned about which "non-personal" screens consumers watch -- especially when they are waiting in indoor or outdoor spaces or walking out-of-home.

We know people are attracted by big-screen technology, but what is the long-lasting "attention" value that comes from growing out-of-home video/visual messaging?

Experts say we need to segment the time a person is in proximity to a screen (called " 'dwell' time") from the actual (and seemingly more valuable) "attention" span. 

The latter is key for marketers -- for digital roadside billboards, that dwell time can be one-and-a-half to three seconds long, while for elevator screens it can be five to 15 seconds.

Lobby screens in corporate, residential or hospitality are estimated at 4.5 to 12 seconds.

What we don’t know is whether this attention is growing, declining, or remaining the same.

Will screen fatigue become an ongoing issue? National CineMedia must believe the promise is that people will want to screen more -- and hopefully more attention will come with it.