Attention Metrics: How to Accurately Measure Ad Performance Beyond Viewability

At the heart of advertising is forging meaningful connections that make a lasting impact. As the industry circles back to this core principle, traditional metrics like viewability are no longer enough to gauge successful advertising. Attention metrics are emerging as a fundamental currency for brands to align with key business outcomes.

That said, questions remain as to all that it encapsulates. In this article, we dive deep into the nuances of attention metrics, unraveling its importance in today’s advertising strategy, and why it’s poised to become a more reliable predictor of outcomes for brands.

What are Attention Metrics?

Attention is a new IAB-recognized metric that measures how engaged or focused an individual user is on an advertisement. Attention metrics are part of an industry-wide push to measure whether someone is able to absorb an ad’s message. This goes beyond traditional metrics like impressions and views, providing insight into the quality of engagement and campaign efficacy.

Other emerging metrics, such as attentive cost per mile (aCPM), attention per mile (APM), and effective attention per mille (eAPM), offer even more precise ways to assess the performance of your ads.  

• aCPM tells you how much it costs to gain a thousand impressions, where the viewer is actively paying attention to the ad over a given period of time.
• APM tracks how much attention each ad receives per thousand impressions, making it easier to identify which content pieces best capture the audience’s attention.
• eAPM takes APM a step further by measuring how audience attention levels align with the brand’s campaign goals. This helps advertisers see which channels or formats create the most meaningful engagement and allocate their budgets accordingly. 

Right now, many platforms and agencies use their own metrics and definitions of success and engagement. While this provides some flexibility in the short term, the bigger picture is one of inconsistency. Varying metrics make it challenging to compare data or accurately gauge ad performance across campaigns. 

A common framework for measuring ad engagement would help ensure that all stakeholders – from brands and agencies to media platforms – are speaking the same language when it comes to evaluating performance. Standardised metrics, such as those focused on attention, can streamline how advertisers track and optimise their efforts while enhancing transparency and accountability.

Why is Attention Important?

Did you know the average attention on screen has decreased by 69% since 2004? Content competes for our focus, making attention a main currency of the digital age.

Several big changes in the digital ecosystem are driving advertisers and publishers to lean on additional insights that prove the impact of digital campaigns. These changes include:

• Cookie deprecation: As third-party cookies continue the path toward becoming obsolete, advertisers and publishers are looking to alternative metrics that can act as proxy performance indicators.
• Creative and copy advancements: Advancements in digital ads allow brands to be more creative with their ad copy and design. Attention metrics offer a solution to the challenge of knowing what messages and creatives are having the greatest impact.
• Measurement needs: Brands and agencies are hyper-focused on showing the correlation of awareness tactics to actual business outcomes.

Attention metrics are primed to answer whether a meaningful interaction results in a real business outcome. Research shows a direct correlation between attention and business outcomes throughout the funnel.

Traditional Metrics vs Attention Metrics

Traditional advertising metrics like impressions, clicks, and click-through rates (CTR) mainly show how often an ad gets seen or clicked on. These vanity metrics might give an idea of user interest, but they don’t tell us much about the quality of those interactions. Are viewers buying anything? Paying attention to the message? Liking the content? Traditional metrics don’t track how much time or focus a user actually gives the ad, and just because an ad is getting lots of views doesn’t mean people are enjoying it.

High impressions or clicks can be misleading, making it seem like the ad is performing well when users might just be clicking out of curiosity or by accident. This leaves advertisers guessing about how effective their campaigns really are. 

New attention metrics, on the other hand, dig deeper by tracking how long and how closely a user engages with the ad content. Here’s why attention is such a great measure of engagement: 

• Gain detailed insights: Instead of just assessing ad reach, attention metrics give you a better understanding of how viewers are engaging with different elements of your ad.
• Make better decisions: With more granular insights, you can make smarter choices about which elements to include in your ads and where to place them for the greatest impact.
• Be more relevant: The more you tweak your ads based on what audiences like best, the more you can tailor your campaigns to resonate with certain demographics.  
• Forge stronger connections: Stronger, more relevant ads create deeper connections with your audience, leading to improved engagement rates in return.

How to Measure Attention Metrics

There is no universally accepted definition of attention as a metric, and slightly different methodologies are used to measure attention across the industry.

Attention measurement solutions typically start with eye-tracking, using a selected group of participants to track which parts of the page they focus on, including ad placement. These eye-tracking studies are complemented with surveys to assess ad recall and purchase intent. 

The data obtained is then used to train a machine-learning algorithm, enabling it to predict the types of media content and campaign creatives that will resonate with individuals. 

Additional proxy signals are also obtained to enhance the predictive model’s intelligence when combined with eye-tracking data. These proxy signals include metrics such as viewability, time in view, dwell time, contextual alignment, click-through rate, scroll depth, and more.

Adelaide attention metrics

Adelaide is a machine-based vendor that created one of the attention economy’s most widely-recognized metrics, the Attention Unit (AU). Ad placements are provided with AU scores – ranging from 1 to 100 – to predict the likelihood of driving outcomes. AU scores for a specific placement come from a combination of session-level page data and outcome data. The higher the score, the more likely that placement is to drive outcomes across the sales funnel.

Marc Guldimann, CEO of Adelaide, explains: “All campaigns should be optimized towards actual advertiser outcomes. Attention should be unpacked so that it can be used in various ways. For example, it’s important that people are paying attention to the creative when the distinctive asset is shown or when the message comes across. We believe that it’s media’s job to create an opportunity for attention that creative captures and then works together with media to drive outcomes.”

Viewability vs Attention: What’s the Difference?

Compared to viewability, which only measures the ad’s potential to be viewed, Attention offers marketers the opportunity to enhance their outcome-driven media buying. Instead of acquiring media based solely on impressions or reach, marketers can now make purchases by gauging the attention generated by an ad campaign.

Attention metrics go beyond impressions to provide a transparent and privacy-conscious method to accurately assess the quality and effectiveness of media. While basic metrics such as viewability can help determine whether to invest in a particular media, attention metrics address more crucial inquiries such as the appropriate investment level, media performance, and the impact of the brand message on audience attention. With these insights, marketers can make more confident investment decisions, fine-tune their media strategies to focus on more efficient attention sources, and achieve better brand outcomes.

“I see attention metrics as an evolution beyond viewability. More and more high viewability placements that are out there today don’t really deliver very much attention or outcomes for advertisers. The biggest step forward that’s going to come from attention metrics is replacing viewability with a better measure of media quality.” – Marc Guldimann, CEO of Adelaide

The Role of Programmatic Advertising in Attention Metrics

Programmatic advertising uses automated technology to buy and sell ad space in real time. This allows it to constantly optimize ad placements to give you the highest levels of engagement possible.

This is a much more dynamic approach to advertising compared to traditional methods. 

Instead of just showing an ad and hoping for the best, programmatic advertising zeroes in on hyper-specific audiences, delivering the right ads to the right people at the right time ‒ those who are more likely to pay attention.

But programmatic advertising only works as well as the data it’s fed with. That’s why it goes hand-in-hand with attention metrics. Programmatic platforms can use attention-based data to reach specific demographics using detailed consumer data ‒ think browsing habits, interests, and past interactions ‒ and optimize placements based on where viewers are paying the most attention. If a particular element of your ad is working really well, programmatic advertising will unlock its full potential.

Attention Metrics Advertising Strategy: Deeper Insights

Attention metrics can provide deep insight into what works well for your audience – from channel mix and placement to creative and format type selection. These factors help enhance trust between brands and publishers, by optimizing campaigns toward high-quality audience engagement.

As Adelaide CEO Marc Guldimann says, “I’ve seen two broad impacts come from attention metrics. The first, and by far the most important, is better outcomes, more efficient incremental outcomes for advertisers. They’re able to cut waste and they’re able to reinvest that money that they’re saving from impressions that used to not capture attention into more effective media placements. That in and of itself creates the second impact, which is… better incentives for the entire marketplace.”

Outbrain + Adelaide attention metrics: The Onyx success

Outbrain’s partnership with Adelaide measures the probability of attention (AU score) across all Onyx in-article experiences. When Adelaide assigns an AU score to a specific placement, it indicates user attention strength and the probability that placement can achieve desired outcomes, whether those KPIs have to do with awareness, purchase intent, or ROI.

Onyx results reported by Adelaide:

• Onyx units performed 53%+ better in terms of AU vs. benchmarks standard mobile banners
• 20%+ better than benchmarks for other high-impact/rich media formats
• Onyx outperformed Adelaide’s overall display & rich media combined benchmarks, across all device types, by over 26% on average.

As Marc concludes, “It’s very important to have a nuanced approach in how you unpack attention metrics and how you use them differently across the entire campaign lifecycle. Attention metrics have been proven to drive better outcomes. If it’s looking at upper funnel, middle funnel, lower funnel, there’s opportunities for advertisers to drive better results in whatever type of message and whatever type of creative. We’ve developed a suite of planning tools at Adelaide that help advertisers understand the minimum AU needed to consistently achieve the outcomes they want. We’ve also focused on making activation easier. And this is part of our partnership with Outbrain, trying to make it easy for advertisers to just buy higher quality media placements using attention metrics. Outbrain’s Onyx platform embodies this.”

The Future of Attention Advertising

Attention advertising is a dynamic field that’s directly influenced by advances in the tech world. AI and machine learning tools, for instance, are set to transform the way we measure and capture attention. AI technologies are particularly strong at gathering massive data sets, which can reveal (and adapt to) real-time insights on consumer behavior, preferences, and engagement levels. 

New AI tools can also: 

• Craft targeted advertising campaigns
• Automate content creation
• Enhance customer segmentation
• Generate more accurate product recommendations
• Utilize CGI influencers and voice assistants
• Implement dynamic pricing models

At the same time, organizations like the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB are developing tools and methods to standardize attention metrics, providing guidelines that will make it easier for brands to compare their ad results across different campaigns and platforms. Especially in the face of rapid technological advancement, these standards are crucial for keeping advertising consistent, transparent, and effective. 

FAQ

What is attention advertising?

Attention advertising measures real-time viewer attention on an ad, using metrics such as visual/audio tracking, physiological and neurological observations, device data signals, and surveys. It prioritizes the quality of audience engagement over traditional metrics like impressions and clicks, helping advertisers create campaigns that resonate with audiences and drive better results.

How do ads attract attention?

Ads attract attention through eye-catching visuals, engaging storytelling, interactive elements, and targeted messaging. By speaking directly to the audience’s interests and strategically placing ads, brands increase the likelihood that viewers will spend more time engaging with their content. 

What is attention-grabbing advertising?

Attention-grabbing advertising focuses on creating content designed to captivate viewers. This could include bold graphics, unique formats, or unexpected narratives. The aim is to stand out amid the competition and effectively convey the brand’s message.

What is the value of attention in advertising?

We live in an attention economy. Customers’ attention is the most valuable commodity for brands today. Campaigns that prioritize attention tend to be more successful, as they create relevant and impactful experiences that leave a lasting impression. These experiences resonate with audiences long after they’ve engaged with the ad.