Attention metrics matter and they’re about to matter a lot more
Are your ads being seen? Is your message resonating and getting heard by the right people? Or is your ad just playing on a screen somewhere while its owner is distracted? Attention metrics are a step up from simply justifying ad spend; they tell us about real human behaviour, and their heyday is coming soon
What’s an attention metric?
An attention metric is any data point you can measure which indicates that an advert was actually seen, read, heard or otherwise consciously digested by a real human being. This might sound like the goal of all ad analytics, but optimising your reporting for attention is actually really hard to do.
Cast your mind back to the primal dawn of digital advertising. Back then, reporting amounted to little more than counting raw clicks. As things got more sophisticated, we’ve reached a point where we can at least be reasonably sure that ads are:
- Reaching a screen belonging to someone in the right demographic
- Being served to humans, not bots
- Showing up in appropriate contexts which complement your brand
- Driving a measurable amount of traffic via calls to action
In other words, we can confidently measure how ads are served, but measuring how (or even if) they’re seen remains elusive. That’s about to change, because technology has advanced and the digital ecosystem has evolved to a point where measuring actual attention is doable.
It is, however, still very early days for attention metrics. Forget what you’ve heard about a human’s ability to pay attention; solid evidence for a shorter attention span is very shaky. Even the old wives’ tales about digital media making us more easily distracted are probably false. There’s simply so much media out there nowadays that what you’re really competing for is a share of your audience’s focus.
Because these metrics are currently enjoying their early adoption phase, there’s no one go-to playbook. Many attention pioneers love eye-tracking data but, as we’re about to find out, that might not be an evergreen strategy. On a more nuts-and-bolts level, sample attention metrics could include:
- What % of impressions had the whole ad on screen for one second or longer
- An ad’s size, relative to the total screen size (more real estate = more attention)
- What % of impressions had the user’s cursor inside the ad frame for 0.5 seconds or longer
So far so good. But things get complicated when we consider that attention metrics are coming of age at a very interesting time.
Post-cookie measurement: metrics in, metrics out
Attention is becoming a much-prized currency just as Google begins to phase out third-party cookies. Older metrics are losing authority, tools are no longer able to reach the places they once could.
That’s the rub. Using today’s privacy standards to develop tomorrow’s attention metrics isn’t going to fly. Stuff like eye tracking becomes harder if not impossible when one-to-one tracking isn’t allowed. Some marketers are battening down the hatches and simply shoring up their existing methods instead of learning new ones.
We don’t recommend that, and it looks like the market leaders agree with us. Brands like AB-InBev make a lot of noise about optimising their ad strategies to measure attention. We should be honest: as measurement becomes harder in a post-cookies world, marketers face a fight to keep their budget. Winning means being the first to prove the value of what you do.
Investing in attention metrics at this stage might look like a leap into the unknown. But it’s going to win long-term trust with budget holders and audiences. Things like GDPR are non-negotiable realities; smart brands will embrace transparency and smart marketers will align themselves with that.
There will be plenty of post-cookie marketers who stick to their old metrics and insist that inaccuracy is a fact of life in the new landscape. Some clients will fall for it; a lot of the c-suite don’t really know the ins and outs of analytics, that’s what they pay you for. Focus on attention now and you’ll leapfrog those marketers because you can demonstrate how and why your measurement is better.
Optimizing for attention
So, how do you as a marketer go about mastering a space which only barely exists at this point? Having kept an eye on things as they develop from innovation to early adoption, we’ve got three recommendations for you:
- Adopt a learning mindset
- Work with what hasn’t changed
- Focus on new data sources
Taking on a mentality where it’s fine to answer a question with ‘I don’t know yet’ is a big departure for marketers who are used to having all the facts and stats. But it’s vital in a space where best practice is still being defined.
Jump on every opportunity to learn, but be wary of those who try to set themselves up as thought leaders too early. Those opportunities will only start showing up once attention metrics are proven in the field.
Some things are staying the same, even in the post-apocalyptic cookieless world. The main constant is creative’s power to win attention. According to Nielsen, creative does 47% of the heavy lifting that converts an ad opportunity into a sale. While targeting is playing catchup, lean into bold concepts which make impact.
Really though, attention isn’t a creative, brand or media thing; it straddles all three. Take this chance to foster closer collaboration while you’re hashing out your KPIs. The goal is to deepen your whole team’s perspective of what makes an ad effective; that doesn’t happen in silos.
Thirdly, think about the data sources you’re using to measure those attention-focused KPIs. Are you going to get enough attention signals from first-party data? Will cookie alternatives like Google Privacy Sandbox do the job once completed? You’re going to run into problems if your data source doesn’t match your preferred attention metrics.
We’re getting good results by connecting digital campaigns to signals from mobile network data. Passive information collected anonymously from over 20 million people can fill the gaps in other data sets, and also give strong attention indicators in its own right.
Nobody has all the answers yet. But if you’ve been convinced, as we have, that attention metrics represent a strong option for the future of ad analytics, let’s talk. By testing today, we can create better ad experiences tomorrow.