An impressive body of work is building in attention measurement. The three winning-papers sessions preceding this panel revealed a work in progress with shared goals as well as differences in approaches. Moderator Earl Taylor of the ARF’s MSI division asked the speakers about their views on barriers to the process, and opportunities for further improving attention measures.
Realeyes uses software solutions for measuring human attentional and emotional response to advertising. Max Kalehoff explained the importance of attention measurement as a gauge of brand performance. He urged companies, particularly those with latent sales, to incorporate it into their business models.
As consumer concerns about privacy are growing and legislators are responding by introducing legal restrictions, marketers are focusing on contextual targeting (instead of cookies) to make their advertising more effective. Research by Integral Ad Science (IAS) has shown that the growth of contextual targeting is not only being embraced by marketers, but also welcomed by consumers: they prefer ads that match the content they are viewing – which makes them more relevant to them.
In a 2019 Pew survey, 79% of Americans say that they know big companies track their online behavior while 59% say they don’t know how the data is used and have little control over how the data is used. In a 2020 survey, Pew found that most Americans want the right to permanently delete their health related data.
While attribution has been around two decades, a great breakthrough for digital, the deprecation of third party cookies is likely to have a significant impact. Options to MTA include: walled gardens, focused on one channel only, and data clean rooms such as those operated by the identity companies. Cleanrooms are data intensive but much better than single channel walled gardens.
Moderator Jorge (TikTok) asked the panelists three key questions:
MediaCell is an app that transforms a smartphone, tablet, or laptop into a passive portable audiometer. It also captures on-device consumption of audio and video. It is currently deployed in panels in the U.K. and Australia and will soon by deployed in South Africa. Ipsos is working with Kantar to use MediaCell in the Netherlands to produce the radio currency there. Its audio measurement capabilities are based on ACR technology. It is easy to on-board panelists; Jim noted that there were no breaks in the data in their U.K. panel due to the pandemic.
Nielsen uses the Portable People Meter (PPM) to passively measure audiences for radio and to enhance its national and local TV ratings. It is now testing a new wearable device to replace the PPM to measure audio and to replace button-pushing to measure person-level television audiences. The new wearable is intended to enable cross-platform measurement of audio and video. Two other pieces of equipment accompany the device – a beacon to allow Nielsen to distinguish between in-home and out-of-home exposure and a data hub to transmit the data back to Nielsen. Another component of the wearable system is a mobile app which will enable engagement and communication with Nielsen and can also be used to transmit data back to Nielsen.
The major challenge to measurement is the vast amount of content to measure and the ability to deduplicate across the many screens. Inclusiveness is the second major challenge – showing the face of America. But this is an opportunity also. The third is chasing identity and privacy at the same time.
Scott introduced Marc Pritchard to the ARF stage with a discussion about the most important marketing and advertising measurement challenges in the industry and Procter & Gamble’s priorities in approaching solutions. While the perpetual fragmentation of the media ecosystem is complicating accurate measurement across platforms, advertisers still have the same simple questions, according to Marc. The consumer is the center of it all – how many people are advertisers reaching, how often are they reaching them, and how effective and efficient is the advertising itself?