Attention, Please! New Marketing Study Highlights Importance of These Three Attention-Scoring Signals

Previously, the Magazine Manager blog wrote about attention within retail media networks (RMNs) and how Integral Ad Science found that sales-promoting ads garner the most attention as well as the most purchases, followed by ads for best-sellers and those for products one “may also like.”

For its latest “The Attention Payoff” study, Integral Ad Science is looking at attention through a metrics-lens for digital media marketers because, as the study says, “although marketers agree on the importance of attention, they are often divided on how to properly harness it, with attention scores and methodologies increasingly diversified.” 

And while nearly nine out of ten media experts use attention measurement, ad buyers and publishers take different approaches, with most ad buyers (57%) monitoring various performance metrics as a proxy to determine attention as opposed to 43% of publishers. 41% of ad buyers use in-house metrics compared to 33% of publishers, and 43% of publishers (and 34% of ad buyers) use attention metrics provided by a third-party vendor.

“A holistic attention measurement and optimization methodology leverages signals across three key categories,” the report says. Those three, in order of the importance that the study’s respondents gave them in calculating an attention score, are visibility (88%), situation (80%), and interaction (78%).

(Source: Integral Ad Science)

Social media was the preferred format for attention metrics (61%), followed by mobile apps (53%) and mobile web (46%), but the study found that buyers and sellers weren’t on the same page beyond that.

“Nearly half of publishers want attention measurement on digital video ads, but only 37% of ad buyers agree,” the study says. “Digital-out-of-home was flagged for attention measurement by one-fifth of ad buyers, but only 10% of publishers agree.”

Overall, 83% of the study’s media experts said an effective attention strategy was important to their company. Of the KPIs viewed as important for attention, media performance ranked the highest for 84%, followed by revenue opportunity (73%).

“Revenue opportunity was the second most cited category, including 34% who endorsed the most sought-after KPI for attention: online sales lift,” the study says. “Increasing online traffic, interaction with ads, and improving branding followed well behind.”