In the US and beyond, advertisers are starting to pay attention to ‘attention – the fact that simply buying ad exposures, or impressions, isn’t enough. If the targeted prospect doesn’t pay attention to the ad, it might as well never have appeared in their field of vision.
Within the past year, the ARF has co-sponsored research and published numerous papers on the topic, while in the UK, a consortium of researchers has created The Attention Council. A handful of companies are now offering research methods that identify the number of people who have their eyes on screen during a TV or online ad exposure, and how long they spend looking at the ad. Some within the media research community are excited about the prospect of attention metrics helping them select the media channels and placements that will provide the best opportunities for their clients.
And the great news is that this level of attention can be measured passively, by watching people’s behavior, rather than having to interview them. So, as long as you’ve made the (rather significant) investment in the technology, and you’ve found a representative sample of consumers who are willing to have a camera focused on their eyes while they’re watching TV or engaging with their smartphone, you have a great data source.
So far, so good.
But eyes on screen isn’t enough. Often, ‘focal attention’ doesn’t necessarily lead to actual processing – the experience of the ad receiving sufficient attention that there is some comprehension of what’s been seen. Here’s where it gets more challenging, but also more interesting.
Not only do we need to know if someone is staring at a screen, we need to know: 1) were they actually paying attention? 2) what got ‘processed’ – that is, what messages, feelings and emotions did the experience elicit? 3) did the experience get attached to the brand, and – finally 4) did that ad experience change anything vis-à-vis the brand in the mind of that person?
So, while we applaud the ARF, The Attention Council and the others who have realized that impressions aren’t enough, the quest to understand how ad spending translates into ad effectiveness must – at some point along the way – involve looking inside the mind of the consumer to see what’s been going on in there.
