Megan Reichelt, Country Manager, Southeast Asia at IAS
For advertising to create an impact, the ad needs to be seen. Now, think about digital advertisement, where multiple ads are displayed at the same time and sometimes for a fraction of a second, you find yourself thinking about whether an ad caught the viewer’s attention. Attention is one of the digital media’s most complex and widely discussed topics.
While everyone is talking about attention, industry research has shown that attention is more nuanced and elaborate. For example, Google’s attention study concluded that the first five seconds of an ad on YouTube are critical. TikTok revealed insights about the importance of creative triggers and shorter content lengths. Attention is key to engage a consumer, engagement is key to delivering performance, and better performance can be linked to improved revenue.
IAS’s recently released whitepaper ‘Taking Action on Attention’ found that attention can be achieved by a combination of media signals that, when used together, improve campaign effectiveness. Through a holistic media quality approach, marketers can drive results by simultaneously understanding and optimising toward consumer attention. Attention is a function of three key signals — Visibility, Situation, and Interaction. The combination of these signals can predict if an impression is likely to lead to a business result.
Let’s take a look at how advertisers can leverage these three key signals to optimise their digital campaigns:
Visibility
To measure consumer attention, visibility signals are key starting points. Afterall, if an ad isn’t meeting basic viewability standards, then it will be impossible to achieve optimal time-in-view or other metrics needed in order to gauge attention. Viewability and time-in-view (TIV) have a medium correlation, which becomes more vital when only looking at impressions on contextually relevant pages (i.e. Toyota ad on an automotive site). Advertisers can target higher viewability rates in programmatic prebid targeting and utilising contextual targeting solutions.
For example, IAS’s research found that when context was relevant and optimised for viewability, there was an 8.3-second increase in Time-in-View for every 10% increase in Viewability Rates. This was 2.4x higher than in a non-optimized context.
Another case study that IAS conducted in partnership with Catalina, a leader in shopper intelligence that personalises the shopper journey, found that a major CPG brand tripled its return on ad spend (ROAS) i.e. a 180% lift in incremental ROAS for in-view ads versus not-in-view.
Since visibility goes deeper than just viewability, it determines how long an ad is being viewed. Interestingly, longer time-in-view isn’t necessarily the key to more results through increased attention. In today’s attention economy, it is important to look beyond viewability to find the sweet spot for ideal time-in-view. For driving incremental sales and ROI, 3 to 10 seconds is the ideal time-in-view range.
Such insights are essential as advertisers continue to optimise their digital campaigns in an economy where justifying every dollar of their ad spend is imperative.
Situation
Consumers today are highly aware of the brands they support, therefore, the environment in which an ad’s impressions are served has an enormous impact on ad performance and consumer receptivity. To connect with consumers on a deeper level brands are not only producing content that aligns with the buyers interests and preferences, but also advertising in contextually relevant settings.
The same study that linked media quality to attention and results, found that optimising for brand safety leads to greater conversions i.e. brand-safe impressions recorded a 233% life in conversion rate compared to those that were not brand safe. Acknowledging that placing ads beside low-quality content can have significant consequences, including a high risk of damaging brand reputation, is crucial.
The saying “less is more” holds true when we consider ad density. Afterall, turning away a consumer because of over exposure to ads is the last thing marketers want. Striking a balance between the environment of the ad and the frequency of ad delivery seems to be the key. The whitepaper found that low (i.e. below average) ad density on a given page points to both better conversion rates and lower costs per conversion.
Interaction
Similar to how we recall our experiences through interactions, how your ad performs is highly influenced by how consumers interact with it. Ensuring your ad is placed in the right environment will lead consumers to notice it, however interacting with this ad will result in true success. Therefore, metrics such as scroll, volume up/down/mute, interaction with video player, and eye-tracking i.e. where the consumers’ gaze and fixation is on the page need to be taken into account. Brands that can harness the dual power of contextual targeting and high-quality placements will drive greater brand engagement.
IAS’s eye-tracking study found that consumers who viewed the in-context ad looked at the ad first and for a longer amount of time than those who viewed the out-of-context ad. Interaction is most influential when predicting conversion performance for video ads, while Visibility and Situation are more important for display.
With our reliance on technology and exposure to digital gadgets one can say digital advertising has become omni-present. As brands continue to spend billions of dollars every year on digital advertising, the onus of driving better ad performance rests with the advertisers. Small details make a difference, and understanding how to tweak your digital campaigns to grab the attention of consumers can deliver superior results.
