Commentary
The Challenge Of 'Attention' Measurement
- by Tony Jarvis , Op-Ed Contributor, June 7, 2021
The challenge of "attention" measurement was addressed during a webinar last week with experts from Ebiquity, Lumens and TVision.
It raised some fundamental questions for advertisers, agencies and the media regarding media and ad-campaign terms and definitions, and attempted to address what metric/s should be used as a media trading …
3 comments about "The Challenge Of 'Attention' Measurement".
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Tony, as you may know, I championed the concept of attentiveness many years ago and have kept at it ever since. However, you can't simply assume that all seconds of "attentive" viewing of a commercial are equal and all you have to do is calculate your CPMs based on total attentive seconds, in aggregate, if you wish to get more people exposed to your ad campaign. For one thing, this assumes that the ad sellers are totally passive numbskulls and they won't recognize which programs are in demand due to attentiveness metrics and which aren't. Once that happens the sellers will simply jack up their CPMs for the good shows---probably by a higher amount than is gained in terms of eyeball contacts.
Returning to my main point. TV commercials of various lengths---"15s" and "30s", mainly----tell a story that starts by catching the viewer's attention, quickly gets into its message and finishes---often with a call to action. The question arises, at what point does the viewer---the attentive viewer---get enough of the message and sales pitch for it to be effective?Is one second, enough---a random second? How about two seconds or three? How many viewers who "saw" three seconds of a 30-second commercial got the message? How does this compare to those who "saw" 15 seconds---or 30 seconds? Are all of these seconds of equal value? I say no.
In our haste to get attention metrics into use---which I agree with---we can't forget what the real purpose is---namely, to facilitate ad message communication---without which we are just kidding ourselves--again.
Exactly. However, will Mike Follett and Yan Liu agree with your/our perspective?
The ARF Media Model offers a helix to understand the stage by stage effects of an ad campaign and Communications is identified as Level 5. Certainly not a media currency. Nor, I believe, is "Attention", Level 4, ("seeing") due to the heavy inlfuence of the creative. Which bring us back to Level 3, Ad Exposure to the target group or Eyes-On ("looking"), surely the most valid and valuable media metric to the sellers and the advertisers as stressed by the ARF Model.
A while ago, Josh Chasin and I essentially asked, "When is an impression not an impression? There are many considerations but one answer is crystal clear, "When it's a "viewable impression"!
Until that misguided term is replaced by "Content Rendered Counts", CRC, the fundamental confusion on the relevance and value of various media metrics will continue to proliferate. Consequently advertisers will pay considerable sums for ads often perfectly rendered by a media vehicle that will never be exposed to their target audience .
Bravo Tony and Ed.
First, in Australia CPM is mainly used as a monetary value comparison metric - how many thousands in your target audience 'saw' the ad and how much does that cost (it basically implies that any viewers outside the target have a value of zero - which of course is not universally true).
Most of the neuroscience data I have seen show that effective ads start with a 'hook' ("hey, that product is for me!"), keep you engaged (albeit at a typically slightly lower level), and then finish off with a tag or an offer ("I'll look it up online or in the shops next time").
The key thing is that the media owner has a degree of control up until the ad starts and needs to be held to account (cost, audience and efficiency). Once the ad starts it is all up to the creative then which is out of the media owner's control.