Surveys on brand favorability and purchase intent were the outcome measure most frequently used in the study, which focused on attention measurement of ad creative, Donato said. But the outcome measure marketers are most interested in appears to be sales or conversions, based on what the ARF is seeing in the third phase of its attention research, which is now underway to evaluate the attention performance of various media platforms.
DoubleVerify didn’t participate in the second-phase ARF study reported in April, but is participating in phase three, Donato said. And given its ability to gather audience and response data in real time, DV should be in a good position to correlate its attention measures with sales and conversions, he said.
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Research support for attention
The Kroger and ARF studies aside, other research, backed by attention measurement firms and agencies that work with them, have shown considerable correlation between attention measures and positive brand outcomes.
One was a study released last month by Lumen Research, whose processes have been independently audited by PwC, and Havas Media Network. The study evaluated more than 9,000 campaigns, 1.8 million survey respondents and 5.6 million impressions and found attention closely correlated with outcomes, with the greatest impact on brand preference and purchase intent.
The research follows another study Lumen released last year from PwC, which found that attention (as measured by Lumen eye tracking) correlated better than viewability on such measures as click-through rate and conversions.
In separate research, Coca-Cola Co. in 2023 reported finding that Adelaide Research’s AU attention metric, which is based on a complex system of more than 1,000 variables, drives lifts in brand preference surveys.
Generally, agencies and marketers say they use attention metrics for planning rather than as currency, including during a show of hands at the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement Summit in New York on Oct. 9. Using attention for planning may involve using projected “attentive seconds” as a factor in figuring how much media to buy in order to hit reach and frequency goals.
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But the reality is that marketers also have been building attention metrics into their programmatic bidding algorithms, which ultimately affects CPMs, said Ali Manning, chief operations officer of Chalice, a custom algorithm developer.
Attention is turning into a “market-driven currency,” said Marc Guldimann, CEO and co-founder of Adelaide, speaking at the CIMM Summit. Buyers may initially use attention for arbitrage, but then it reaches a point that it affects inventory value, and then buyers want guarantees around the metric, he said.
“There are already a bunch of publishers out there offering guarantees using our metric and our data,” Guldimann said. “Opinions don’t matter. The market will decide what happens, and the good news is we’re already starting to see it happen.”