Why all this talk about attention?
Attention allows for information to be taken in: If you’re not paying attention you are unable to understand, or learn and remember what you’ve seen. And old metrics like reach and impressions just don’t tell the story that we as media buyers for so many years have relied on.
- About 75 per cent of all online ads that you pay for against Media Ratings Council (United States-based nonprofit organization) standards, are actually not getting any human attention at all.
- Not all active attention seconds are equal (Mental availability).
- It takes 3 seconds active attention to an ad to access memory, and for every additional second, that brand lasts in memory for a further 3 days.
But how should companies, brands and agencies actually track and measure the attention they’re getting?
Tools: There are different tools popping up that will help them with this, and the first one that comes to mind is AttentionPlan from amplified intelligence. This is a tool that helps media buyers track actual active human attention across channels and formats, and more accurately determine attribution. Both in terms of numbers but also visual heatmaps of their ad creatives, using eye tracking tech.
Qualitative research: And they should do a thorough qualitative test to see if the combination of creative and the formats they are using it on, actually results in their brands being the one that is remembered. Because studies have shown than in many instances that if your brand and brand message is missing, that your audience fills in the blanks with predictions. And before you know it you are paying for your competitors attention in the marketplace.
Is there anything that you can recommend for a small and medium sized business to implement today to help gain attention?
Sound fluffy, but I dare them to stand out more. As Seth Godin says, be a “purple cow”. Because that’s what marketing at the end of the day is all about; is this something worth talking about? With my peers, my colleagues, my boss, my wife, etc. And if you nail this for the right audience, with the right combination of things that then continues to grab and earn peoples attention, you are truly on to something. To quote Seth Godin again: People like us, do things like this. The ideal people that you are trying to engage with, will buy from you, they will tell their friends, and they will care about how you care for them.
Thank you very much, Jógvan Brimheim Gunnarsson from Smoc.ai
