Attention Advertising 101: How to Use Attention Metrics

Lately, it feels like the advertising industry is turning its attention to… attention. And while this fresh trend is still finding its way, its emergence proves that the industry is ready to move on from the current slate of standardized metrics for digital marketing. With seemingly endless advertisers looking to grab a user’s attention, it's imperative for brands and publishers to create unique digital experiences that will drive more than simply impressions.

By digging deeper into how we measure digital campaigns, attention metrics can provide marketers with a more accurate picture of how users are interacting with their content.

What are Attention Metrics in Advertising?

Attention metrics describe how attention can be measured by tracking consumers’ focus on ads. Attention metrics refer to a set of data that can be used to approximate media quality and creative efficacy. When leveraging attention metrics for digital campaigns, advertisers gain greater transparency into the value of their media investment and increased control in optimizing towards more efficient and impactful results. 

Attention metrics give advertisers transparency into the value of their media spend, specifically equity diversity, inclusion accessibility (edia) quality and the efficacy of the creative. Already adopted across popular channels like Digital, CTV and social media, attention metrics are also gaining traction for-in game ads, digital out of home and even audio formats. Attention metrics are here to stay and will continue to provide further value to advertisers as third-party cookies are officially phased out in the future.

Viewability is an accredited industry standard; however, as a binary metric, it does not consider proven quality signals like clutter and page geometry, making it a poor proxy for media quality. 

Attention metrics are the data points utilized by companies and promoters to measure customer attention in order to optimize media placements and creative direction. These ratings range from general stand-ins, for example, viewability, to more precise indicators, such as laboratory-based or board-based eye-tracking, which records individuals' genuine interest and concentration. 

Attention metrics revolve around duration – concentrating on how much time an individual views an ad or media and on precisely what activities they took throughout that period.

How to Create an Attention-Grabbing Campaign

While we are well aware that beautiful creatives are an important part of an effective marketing campaign, this rings true for garnering users’ attention as well. The strength of the ad creative is a key factor in engaging and ultimately driving quality attention from your target audience. 

Here are some tried and true ways to capture users’ attention.

• Contextual Alignment: Ads driven by context foster meaningful and impactful connections with consumers in the moment without risking privacy infringements. Due to the very nature of contextual targeting, users are already tapped into the topic and are more likely to not only pay attention but may interact at a faster rate as well.

• Rich Media/Interactive Creatives: Thanks to the evolution of mobile advertising, many brands are opting to go beyond static images and boring banners. At Kargo, we believe in creating gorgeous creatives that drive meaningful awareness and engagement. This is partly achieved by rich media ad units that prompt users to enjoy and interact with ads instead of recoiling from another basic and uninventive advertisement.

• Prominent Branding: This may be a bit obvious, but a general rule of thumb when creating effective digital campaigns is to ensure that the user knows who is serving them the ad. You'll have a small window to grab the attention of the user, and during that time, you need to be certain that the brand can be identified and clearly communicated.

• Clear & Concise Messaging:Regardless of how you deliver the message, you want the user to (quickly and easily) absorb what the ad is pitching. Create a thumb-stopping moment with humor or delight or tug on a heartstring or two.

How to Optimize Your Campaign for Attention

At Kargo, we know a thing or two about creating beautiful ad experiences, and we can confirm the massive influence and impact that strong and innovative creative has in advertising. Regardless if a campaign leverages attention metrics or not, creative testing is a vital tool for maximizing advertising impact. For brand marketers looking to increase upper-funnel outcomes, creative testing isn’t as straightforward. Legacy metrics can muddy the field, obscuring the truth within the data.

Attention metrics enable a normalized view of media quality. Advertisers can run a campaign, quickly analyze fast-moving attention metrics to find equally attentive placements, and then introduce either an A/B or split test on creative.

Armed with the ability to evaluate the level of attention for every placement across multiple channels, marketers are able to drive the same brand impact for less and therefore gain a powerful tool to improve their bottom line,  making attention metrics a win-win. 

To ensure that your ads are optimized to garner the most attention, it's important to think not just about the creative but the current consumer trends and behaviors as well. For example, we all know that boring static banners are not cutting it (especially against banner blindness!), so continuously utilizing this approach is probably not the best route to success. This becomes especially true given that video and other rich media formats are on trend. Other things to consider when optimizing for attention are the size and format of the ad and the quality and content of the page. Partnering with premium publishers that don’t rely on spammy tactics or promote misinformation is important and will impact the quality of attention your campaign will deliver.

Attention metrics offer a new level of insight into campaign performance. But with those insights come a new set of terms for marketers to learn! This terminology will help you as you navigate the exciting new world of attention marketing.

• Attention Metrics: A broad category of measurement used to determine the active or likely attention paid to digital media content. Attention metrics can include duration measurement, environmental evaluation, engagement tracking (clicks, taps, scroll speed), eye tracking, and even brain activity scans.

• Page Clutter: A relative measure of ad density on a given page, page clutter is determined by comparing the pixels-in-view for the given ad to the total pixels-in-view for all ads on a page. Lower ad clutter generally indicates a smaller number of total ads on a page and a higher probability of attention.

• Banner Blindness:  This term is a long-known web user behavior: it describes people's tendency to ignore page elements that they perceive as ads. Although webpage patterns and types of advertisements have evolved, banner blindness is still prevalent, and the aversion to this type of advertising will not be going away anytime soon.

• Eye Tracking: This is the evaluation of eye position and movement to assess visual attention. Eye tracking can be conducted in real-world scenarios, usually using a webcam, front-facing phone camera, or lab-based setups.

• Time-in-View: This is the average duration that a viewable impression remains in view. According to the Media Ratings Council's standards calculation, the time-in-view excludes impressions that were not viewable.

• qCPM: “Quality” CPM is when an advertiser meets a certain level of “quality” across several metrics, such as frequency and viewability.

All Eyes on Attention

Attention marketing isn't just about creating viral content. It's about creating a digital experience that will grab your audience's attention and keep it in the long run.

At Kargo, we believe in the power of attention and how it can drive better business outcomes for advertisers. Thanks to our partnership with Adelaide, Kargo is leading the industry in attention media. Recently, we ran our first campaign guaranteeing media quality with attention, and the impressive results truly speak for themselves.

Interested in leveraging the power of attention metrics for your brand’s next digital campaign? Let’s connect!