Online Advertising as Marketers
For the past two decades, marketers have become used to a world where countless ads vie for views and clicks. The value of all those eyeballs and poking digits went unchallenged.
But things have changed dramatically lately.
The ways people access information on digital channels have shifted—along with their habits of viewing entertainment and sports.
And yet, the metrics for measuring their interactions with advertising continue to lag those shifts.
As CTV viewership continues to rise, AI is making content creation faster and cheaper than ever to distribute. It’s also disrupting search with AI-supplied answers that make consumers less likely to click on the search-generated “blue links” that publishers used to depend on.
On top of that, the continued decline of third-party cookies is devaluing “clicks” as a way to analyze and target consumers based on the trail of websites they visit.
The result is that online advertising as marketers know it is over. But rather than inducing more nervousness among marketers and media, there’s a reason to feel good about it: using attention metrics will prove more effective and valuable to ad buyers, sellers, and consumers.
What is attention?
I want you to know that attention is the spending of time, not money. In the world of digital advertising, attention is the great equalizer, lending equal spending power to everyone, from the most financially well-off to the rest of us.
In the context of digital advertising, “attention” measures user engagement with content beyond views and clicks. Determining the value of that attention involves analyzing how long a user interacts with an ad and the quality of that interaction.
This can include metrics such as time spent, hover rate, viewability (whether the ad was seen vs. just being served), and interaction depth (e.g., whether audio was enabled for a video ad and if the ad was watched in full or partially).
The CTV influence
CTV is the perfect update of “old media” and new. While linear TV has been grappling with time-shifted viewing for decades, CTV is increasingly including live sports in addition to promoting “binge-worthy” viewing.
Advertising effectiveness on CTV is tied to the growing importance of attention metrics. As television becomes more interactive, the traditional metrics of TV advertising (e.g., gross rating points) are becoming outdated. CTV allows for more direct and measurable user engagement metrics, which are critical for understanding how content holds viewers’ attention.
Opt-in engagement models in CTV like Infillion’s TrueX, where viewers choose to interact with ads in exchange for benefits like reduced overall ads or uninterrupted content, underscore the importance of intentional and genuine viewer attention. Such models ensure that the ads presented are not only seen but actively engaged with, enhancing the value of each viewer interaction significantly. This approach respects the viewer’s time and preferences, aligning with modern consumer expectations for less intrusive and more rewarding ad experiences.
While not all content will be “CTV,” the gravitational pull of CTV’s growth as a leading content format will spur demand from media buyers for apples-to-apples comparisons. For CTV, attention metrics will offer the clearest signs of what content and advertising drives, both in branding objectives and performance-based outcomes.
Paying attention to attention is the new standard
Traditionally, digital advertising has emphasized clickthrough rates (CTRs), which track the percentage of clicks per number of impressions. However, CTRs are a bottom-of-the-funnel metric; they measure outcome but not effectiveness. They often fail to account for the user’s engagement level or emotional response.
As users’ media consumption gravitates to models like CTV, striking that emotional connection is going to be critical for brand building and performance objectives simultaneously. This puts attention at a premium and makes measuring it primary. Paying attention to attention will pave the way for marketers to establish long-term customer value.
Attention metrics also offer several advantages over traditional CTR measurements, such as:
Comprehensive engagement data: Attention provides a fuller picture of how users interact with ads. For example, a user might spend a significant amount of time on a creative interactive ad without clicking through. This deep engagement can increase brand recall and favorability even without that click.
Quality over quantity: By focusing on attention, advertisers will have to prioritize the quality of interactions. In an advertising environment overrun by clickbait and vanity metrics, attention ensures that content quality and user experience are at the forefront.
Alignment with advanced technologies: With the rise of AI and machine learning, attention metrics can be finely tuned and dynamically optimized to enhance user engagement in real-time based on how users interact with content.
Future-proofing advertising strategies: As privacy concerns lead to the demise of third-party cookies, attention metrics provide a viable alternative that relies on first-party data and user consent, aligning with evolving regulatory frameworks.
The simplicity of attention metrics is at the heart of CTV’s appeal. And that simplicity makes sense for measuring other online activity. “Attention,” obviously, is plain English; unlike CTRs and the panoply of ad tech alphabet soup designations, your grandparents don’t need the concept explained to them.
However, there are challenges to measuring attention accurately. First, it does require a level of sophistication that some metrics providers may not be up to; sometimes attention metrics measurements come at a cost to the kind of seamless integration that marketers or media buyers expect.
On top of that, there remains a need to ensure your attention metrics provider doesn’t avoid privacy concerns. Although third-party cookies were diminished by privacy concerns, misuse of invasive user tracking is still used to capture attention.
With those caveats in mind, the switch from CTRs to attention metrics looks beneficial overall with benefits for marketers, media buyers, publishers, and consumers.
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