Media Agencies

Inside Dentsu Media's 5-Year Endeavor to Measure Attention

The industry is slowly embracing attention as a new media planning currency—but questions remain

An illustration of a blue eye, and text reading — Despite holding companies' focus on attention metrics, there's still no industry measurement standard.Dentsu Media

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Assume a consumer, watching TV, turns to Instagram during a commercial break and spots an interesting ad on their feed. In that moment, two advertisers paid to capture the consumer’s attention, but only one succeeded.

“Turns out people are very good at ignoring advertising,” said Mike Follet, managing director at eye-tracking firm Lumen Research. “Just because something’s viewable, does not mean it gets viewed.”

It’s all but impossible for brands to understand how much money they’ve lost to consumer’s waning attention and competing content.