Consumers have always had the ability to be distracted by advertising, but the proliferation of technology has created infinitely more opportunities for that to happen. For advertisers, the importance of attention is intuitive. If someone does not pay attention to your ad, it won’t have an impact. But, as with most things, there is a lot of nuance there, and putting some hard facts and figures behind that intuition helps with understanding the scope.
And that’s exactly what we did at Turner Ignite.
All exposures are not created equal
Consider this analysis correlating tune-in and store visits for a quick-serve restaurant: In a sample of more than 3,000 people over the course of a year, we looked at people who were exposed to the QSR advertising within the two scenarios laid out previously—attentive TV watchers and distracted TV watchers.
The data showed that impressions delivered to attentive viewers were up to four-times more effective in driving store visits than exposures to the other group. In short, optimizing a media plan for areas where people pay attention, rather than just a GRP, drives greater conversion.
Attention varies more with context
For example, TVision Insights found that State Farm ads with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers garner 10% more attention when they air during Packers games. Turner found similar results when using “Driver Tags” to measure the context match between the programming content and the actual ad creative—there was greater return on investment where there was a closer alignment.
This is why efforts within the Turner Ad Lab and other joint industry initiatives, as well as continued adoption of emerging native formats, are vital. They put into practice, beyond just lip service, what’s needed to re-imagine ad experiences and improve the ROI that advertisers get from video advertising.
Russo, J., & Schiffman, D. (2017, Nov. 30.). Attention: The Gorilla in the Room. AdAge.