The battle for consumer attention: Who comes up on top?

In today’s digital age of information overload, fleeting trends and constant noise, attention has become a precious and scarce commodity. In the battle for eyeballs, attention metrics can serve as a valuable weapon to understand the nuances of audience engagement and consumer behaviour towards ads.

A recent study by Yahoo and Omnicom Media Group in partnership with Amplified Intelligence called ‘Hierarchy of Attention & Outcomes’ delved into how understanding the hierarchy of attention metrics can help optimise media placement strategy. By serving nearly 9,000 ads to 2,000 respondents in the US and Australia, the study discovered that certain key campaign elements such as devices, publishers, ad formats, creativity, and brand size, can significantly impact how an ad grabs attention. 

For starters, there are two types of attention: active attention occurs when the viewer is directly engaged with the ad and passive attention occurs when the viewer is engaged in the surrounding content. While advertisers often focus on active attention, the study reveals that the most impactful attention occurs when active and passive attention work in tandem to create a synergistic effect, known as total attention - this provides brands with the best chance to gain mental availability in that given moment. 

Moreover, even brief moments of attention can have a lasting effect. Just two and a half attention seconds are required for short-term advertising strength (STAS) — the likelihood of a brand being spontaneously considered at a purchase occasion — which then also contributes to long-term memory retention. When an ad successfully breaks through the noise and captures attention for at least 2.5 seconds, it meets the attention-memory threshold, leading to increased memory retention and mental availability, and ultimately brand growth and higher sales. With these in mind, how can brands and marketers effectively leverage attention metrics to come up on top?

Supercharging omnichannel campaigns with CTV

The largest screen in the home, connected TV (CTV), is a highly immersive channel for attention, with the greatest opportunity to capture the audience's attention - CTV garners an average of 14.1 seconds of total attention, well above mobile at 10.8 seconds and desktop at 6.8 seconds. Study data also shows that video ad formats, on CTV in particular, are more effective than static ads in capturing active attention across all devices. 

Each channel—CTV, mobile, and desktop—plays a distinct role in the marketing funnel and understanding these channel-specific strengths is key. CTV's immersive nature, with ads typically occupying the entire screen, contributes to its ability to command the most active attention.

In contrast, mobile devices often foster passive attention, as users frequently engage with content surrounding the ad. While CTV garners the highest attention and is ideal for raising brand awareness and reinforcing market position, personal devices such as mobile and desktop are more effective for driving purchases, with 26% more likely to buy on mobile, followed by desktop. 

CTV’s programmatic availability and attention prowess present exciting opportunities to unlock the full potential of omnichannel strategies. Here’s how you can win: First, harness the power of CTV’s reach and attention-grabbing capabilities to create awareness and drive consideration.

Then, pair this with mobile and desktop ads, optimised for lower funnel conversions, to complete the omnichannel loop and inspire action. Having a strategic channel mix that addresses specific brand objectives and needs across the marketing funnel via a well-executed omnichannel campaign, will ensure your campaign delivers impact at every stage to effectively guide people through the customer journey. 

High quality, high attention: premium content within highly trusted environments

To capture and sustain audience attention, the ad itself is only one piece of the puzzle; the quality of the digital environment where the ad appears plays a critical role in determining its effectiveness. Every digital environment has its own "attention elasticity," a range of active attention seconds that an ad creative can achieve within the specific conditions of the digital environment or format.

The study revealed that the same ad format or creative can attract varying levels of attention depending on the digital environment in which it appears. Quality and immersive content placed in highly trusted digital environments, such as domains with high overall attention performance, can significantly influence the attention your ad receives. These prized environments provide fertile ground for attention as readers, engrossed in the content, tend to scroll at a slower pace and engage more deeply.

With so much to consider and execute, leveraging advanced, AI-powered ad platforms can be a game-changer for advertisers. These platforms help efficiently identify winning opportunities for advertisers throughout the campaign, enhance the speed of decision and help them place ads within highly trusted digital environments that command high overall attention.

Prioritising digital environments that consistently command high attention and seizing favourable circumstances in a timely manner helps advertisers drive performance and efficiency by maximising the impact of their ad format and creativity.

Keys to the attention trove: creative, emotions and brand size

Attention alone is not enough; it needs to be on the things that matter. For attention to deliver a business impact, it’s essential that advertisers understand how elements such as creativity, emotions, and brand size influence attention. 

High-emotion creatives can amplify ad attention, and strategically pairing these with high-attention digital environments can yield significant rewards, with an 18% uplift in attention. 

Brands also need to be present at the right moment - if the brand is missing in the creative, viewers often misattribute the ad to the largest competitor, resulting in wasted attention and lost sales. 

Smaller, less recognisable brands, derive greater value from active attention. Their ads have a higher risk of attention misattribution to competitors as brand assets may not be as distinctive or recognisable to audiences.

Here, advertisers should focus on ensuring that branding opportunities are front and centre and maximised to capitalise on total attention for these branded moments. Focus on prioritising strong branding throughout the ad creative which can help garner more of the right attention and allow viewers to attribute the ad to the right brand. Consider placing ads on channels such as CTV, where consumers typically pay more active attention in seconds as compared to mobile and desktop.

On the other hand, larger, more recognisable brands benefit more from passive attention. Their distinctive brand assets such as logo, colours, slogan, style, character, associated celebrity, packaging and jingle, are so familiar that people recognise them even when they're not paying close attention. With their established mental presence, larger brands can focus on targeting channels, digital environments and ad formats that garner more passive attention.

With players such as Amplified Intelligence, Adelaide, GumGum and Playground XYZ, amongst others, providing ready solutions to capture the attention economy, advertisers can focus on becoming masters of their craft. By understanding the key factors that influence attention - from utilising the right channels and media to creative elements, they can break through the noise and connect with consumers at the right touchpoints throughout their journey.

In the battle for attention, those who can effectively leverage the tools at their disposal will emerge victorious. 

This article was written by Kenneth Koh, Head of Commercial Sales, SEA, Yahoo.

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