Why is it important to understand attention?

Tracing the origins of attention in advertising

Attention may currently be an industry hot topic, but it has always been an important concept within advertising. To this day renowned advertising executive, William Bernbach’s famous remark, “If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic” remains an industry trope that holds true.

It was Herbert Simon who first coined the term “attention economy” in the 1960s, nearly 30 years before the birth of the internet. Simon predicted that as the amount of available information exponentially increased, attention would inevitably become a scarce commodity due to the linear relationship between population growth and the time available per day. It is safe to say that Herbert Simon’s predictions have not only stood the test of time, but have been reinforced in today’s digital age. 

Why is it worth measuring attention?

Attention may be an industry buzzword, but is it worth measuring? The IAB (an industry body promoting standards and best practices globally) outlined why understanding and measuring for attention is critical for advertisers. 

As we’ve mentioned, attention isn’t a new concept – it’s been well-known to advertisers for decades. However, in recent years the technology utilised to measure attention has progressed significantly.

In today’s fast-paced digital world capturing consumer attention is increasingly challenging, and the competition for attention is fierce. It is estimated that consumers are exposed to 5,000+ ads per day and completely ignore 75% of them. How do you make sure your ad captures their attention?

Measuring attention can provide valuable insight into the user’s conscious choices regarding which content they engage with and whether they have viewed your ad. This type of attention is commonly referred to as selective attention and plays a significant role in creating top-of-mind awareness for your brand.

Attention provides a greater level of insight than traditional metrics offer, going far beyond whether an ad is viewable or not. According to the IAB’s research, attention has even been found to be 6x more effective than viewability in predicting recall, and 7x more effective in predicting awareness. 

Attention puts the emphasis back on the quality of the user’s ad experience, and holds just as much weight as traditional quantitative measures, such as reach.

Although we are discussing attention in the context of digital advertising, it is a versatile metric that can also be used for a variety of different formats. For example, attention has the potential to play a key role in understanding a user's engagement with emergent digital formats such as AR/VR, gaming, and CTV.

Traditional versus attention metrics

Traditional metrics like impressions, clicks, CTR, and viewability may be easy to understand, but they only offer a small snapshot of campaign performance. These metrics are also limited in scope because they rely solely on server-side measurements that can’t fully capture the subjective perception of the consumer viewing the screen. Viewability identifies whether a user has the ability to view an ad, but just because an ad is technically viewable it doesn’t mean that it will catch a user’s attention. Attention, in contrast to these metrics, tells us whether or not the ad has been noticed.

Overall, attention measurement offers a comprehensive view of audience engagement and interaction with an ad campaign. Studies have also shown that attention is a better predictor of campaign results than viewability, making it a crucial metric for marketers. In contrast, viewability is at risk of becoming a "gamed metric," which can lead to the use of small ads designed solely to play for viewability metrics.

For more on the move away from viewability towards attention read: Viewability vs Attention… the battle of the measurement methods.

What are attention metrics?

Attention is the first metric that captures the human consumption of ads; but currently there is no universally agreed standard for defining the group of measurements that comprise attention. This group currently incorporates various emergent technologies, interaction signals, while also building on existing metrics.

As the industry shift towards buying  attention rather than viewable impressions, there is also a need for a new measurement value that can be applied to both high impact and and standard display formats. As a result, aCPM (attentive CPM), APM (attention per mile), and eAPM (effective attention per mille) have emerged as measurements for the value of attention generated. These metrics will be used as advertisers begin to plan, buy and optimise based on attention.

For more on how Adnami's Attention Metric read: The Adnami Attention Score: Bridging attention and high impact ads and Under the hood of the Adnami Attention Score.