Attention

Marketing requires some degree of attention to have any effect on its audience. The range of possible attention levels varies dramatically by platform, and decays over time.

"On average, less than one fourth of “viewable” time translates into actual attention."
"You need to keep someone’s attention for 2.5 seconds before you have a chance of influencing memory. Around 85% of digital ads don’t do this."

"Attention Elasticity – the range of attention seconds possible under the conditions of that platform or format. Attention elasticity forms the attention opportunity for ad creative... Scrollable formats are less elastic, the range of attention they offer is not as great. Others, with less distracting features, are more elastic and the outer range of attention they offer is greater." — The Attention Economy’s chicken and egg question

"Baseline ad attention levels are vastly different depending on the media channel or platform... ‘Scrollable media’ attention decay cuts audience reach volumes by up to 70%... Conversely, unscrollable media – video and large screen TVs – showed largely unchanged attention decay after 20 seconds." — Reach curves have gone rogue

'The major difference between the legacy of recall and the new standard of attention, she explained, is that “high, sustained, undivided attention is not typical of how humans interact with advertising. High attention is still very, very valuable. But the biggest uplift in sales performance actually comes from low-attention processing, which is something that … recall can’t measure.”' — Why brands should consider attention-based metrics

"Eyes-on dwell time" varies dramatically be platform—"Here we can see that if people look at TV ads, they tend to look at them for a long time, relatively speaking: a 30-second TV ad will generate around 13.8 seconds of eyes-on dwell time, on average… A 15-second YouTube ad will not get watched for the 15 seconds: people know the Skip button and are not afraid to use it. On average, dwell time with 15 second YouTube ads is 4.9 seconds… Dwell time with social media ads is much lower, which is largely a result of the scroll velocity.” — The Challenge of Attention

"The study shows a 0.98 correlation (where 1 is complete correlation and 0 no correlation at all) between the number of attentive seconds per thousand ad impressions delivered by a media channel and the long-term incremental profit generated for brands." — Maximizing Profit through Attention

"Both small and large brands experience increases in brand choice for each second of active and passive attention, (which also talks to the value of attention duration), however, the study revealed that smaller brands can achieve four times more brand uplift per second of active attention compared to their larger counterparts." — Attention Applied, The Nuance of Size (and the attention outcomes relationship)

"Across all ads in the study – only 42% of these branded moments were actively viewed. Making matters worse, on ‘fast attention-decay’ platforms – where most viewers lose interest early and avoid/scroll/skip the ad fast – only 35% of participants actively viewed the 42% of the branded moments. This dual impact affects both the frequency of brand exposure and the size of the audience reached, both of which impact outcomes." — Attention Applied, The Nuance of Size (and the attention outcomes relationship)

"Attention makes a tangible difference to effectiveness... We see this clearly when the balance of investment for campaigns is weighted towards lower-attention media platforms, thus undermining the advertising budgets and reducing the impact of creativity. The ACA Effectiveness Database indicates that there is a large effectiveness difference between a high-attention media plan and a low-attention one, even at the top end of the effectiveness spectrum. ESOV does make a difference but... Higher-attention media platforms come at a cost... It is on these media platforms that the competitive advantage from creative strength is amplified." — Attention and effectiveness, Why one makes a difference to the other

"Green and Watson (2020*) using device-based eye tracking, reported that ads that were given visual attention during a test showed an uplift in recognition from 33% to 66% compared to when they were not looked at." — Giving attention a little attention

"(Google 2021). Here, both aided and unaided brand recall were seen with increases with visual dwell time on the YouTube ads. In addition, they also showed that brand familiarity was a factor in brand memory." — Giving attention a little attention

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