The speaker, Marc Guldimann, founder of Parsec Media and co-founder Adelaide, is also a co-founder of The Attention Council. In his presentation he explained why he and the Council are promoting the use of attention metrics to help advertisers place ads into media environments that drive superior performance.
During the discussion, Duane Varan (MediaScience) and Steve Bellman (MediaScience & Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) discussed the metrics they used, the implications of their research for media planning, and the results of their research in the U.S. Sean Pinkney (Comscore) talked about the lessons he had taken away from his analysis of missing data.
According to the study’s sponsor, the research was prompted by many advertisers’ “ambivalence” about news as context for their ads. The study, the largest of its kind ever conducted, used an experimental design, placing comparable ads in newspapers and on digital platforms. Digital ads were placed in news and other contexts. The study was conducted in Australia, but U.S. data were also obtained. The analysis focused on three issues:
Havas and Teads reported on eye-tracking research that they did with Lumen on a number of websites on both desktop and mobile. They then analyzed a number of factors related to attention to digital display and video ads including ad format, demographics, category of the site’s domain, type of content on the site and characteristics of the publisher environment. The research generally confirmed their hypothesis that deeper engagement with content, with lower scroll speeds, led to longer amounts of time that ads are in view and greater attention to those ads. Ads on Teads publishers’ sites, in particular, garner greater attention than other digital ads, and Teads’ formats garner more attention than standard ads in the same category, particularly for display. This research has helped Havas to quantify the value of their inventory to optimize planning for attention and develop a curated approach to programmatic. They refer to this approach as the “Havas Meaningful Market Place.”
The ARF Cognition Council presented an event focused on advertising within news content and context effects in programmatic buying. The first panel presented research on the effectiveness of advertising within news content on television and online, drawing from available qualitative, quantitative, and neuroscience evidence. The second panel delved into the potential opportunity for the context in which an ad is placed to be used in programmatic buying as the third-party cookie becomes less important.
On February 24, 2022, the ARF Creative Council brought to light a new method for brain-storming great advertising creative. Industry leaders partnered with improv experts to showcase how combining qualitative research and the art of improvisation can kick-start innovative advertising ideas.
On October 12, 2022, experts from Meta, the Brand Safety Institute and the ARF discussed brand risk for ads placed near unsuitable content on social media feed platforms. Meta researchers presented their data-driven measurement approach and their conclusions that there is minimal-to-no association for content adjacent to ads and that ad adjacency to risky content does not impact brand value.
The process for Certification of the Meta Project by the ARF was outlined. Additionally, the panel considered how consumers engage with ads on a feed platform differently than they engage with ads on more traditional platforms with different potential outcomes for ads adjacent to risky content.
On June 7, 2023, attention economy experts came together in NYC to share case studies and participate in engaging discussions on the attention measurement landscape. Plus, attendees heard a recap of the issues debated at AUDIENCExSCIENCE and an update on Phase I of the ARF Attention Validation Initiative, an empirically based evaluation of the rapidly developing market for attention measurement and prediction.
Member Only AccessWith Trevor Testwuide (Measured) providing context and Ian Yung (Tonal) guiding the case studies from Pinterest and Google, the two presenters tested whether ads/channels were working and how far marketers can scale them. Trevor compared last-touch attribution to incremental ROAS, showing the significant discrepancies between platform-reported and media-driven incremental conversions. The incrementality experiment methodologies used in the case studies were cohort based first-party audience split testing and geo-matched market incrementality testing, which Trevor noted were must-haves in determining where to cut waste and where to scale. Results from the case studies measuring holdout cohorts showed overinvestment in Pinterest based on organic conversions, and a 13% increase in ROAS on Google Shopping from under-reporting of incrementality.