This post was created in partnership with Viant
An ad can generate millions of impressions, spark controversy, or rack up views. But none of those measures alone reveals whether people watched the ad.
That question drove the conversation at ADWEEK Exchange in New York, part of a national roadshow from Viant and ADWEEK exploring how attention data can help marketers evaluate creative, media investments, and business outcomes.
What an AI-generated ad reveals about attention
Yan Liu, CEO of TVision, opened the event by examining the gap between ad exposure and human attention. Americans spend nearly four hours watching television daily, he explained, but only about nine minutes represent actual attention to commercials.
Conventional measurements such as reach, viewability, and completion rates don’t necessarily reveal whether someone was watching.
Liu illustrated the distinction with new data on Coca-Cola’s AI-generated “Holidays Are Coming” commercial, which drew criticism following its 2025 release.
Despite the negative social reaction, the AI-generated ad earned as much real human attention as Coca-Cola’s typical holiday ad, garnering a Creative Attention Score of 101, slightly above Coca-Cola’s average of 100. TVision’s second-by-second measurement also showed attention increasing when the lights turned on and the brand’s logo appeared.
“We’ve been measuring a lot of AI creative these days, and in general, the performance is on par, and sometimes it’s actually better than average creative,” Liu said. “I think that gives us the confidence that the AI creative definitely can help our industry to move forward to capture more attention.”
The findings suggest that negative commentary about AI-generated creative doesn’t necessarily translate into lower audience attention.
For PJ Pereira, co-founder and creative chairman of SILVERSIDE and Pereira O’Dell, the studio involved in producing the campaign, AI presents opportunities to develop and refine creative faster.
“Being able to bring your ideas to life in real time is an incredible gift our generation has been given. But just because you can create something doesn’t mean you know how to make it resonate,” Pereira shared. “Capturing an audience’s attention, making them dream, and creating something that delivers real value for brands takes more than imagination and technology. It takes experience, creative judgment, and a deep understanding of how storytelling and marketing work together. What this data shows us is that when all those disciplines come together, something powerful happens.”
Turn attention into action and creative into action
In the brand panel that followed, marketing leaders discussed how attention data could inform media, creative, and business decisions. Moderated by Will Lee, CEO of ADWEEK, the panel featured Danielle Sporkin, SVP of media and marketing services at Ferrero; Dai Kageyama, SVP of marketing at The Hartz Mountain Corporation; Holly Dunn, head of North America investment at Havas Media Network; and Chris Vanderhook, COO and co-founder of Viant.
At Ferrero, brands such as Nutella, Kinder, and Tic Tac have different marketing needs. Sporkin said CTV can build awareness, drive engagement, and support purchases, with retailer data helping connect advertising to conversion.
Hartz, a pet care and supplies manufacturer, faces a related challenge in understanding CTV’s impact. Kageyama said the company uses retail media to reach younger pet owners but has struggled to isolate CTV’s contribution when multiple campaigns run simultaneously.
“It’s very difficult to really understand, OK, what did CTV do for you?” Kageyama explained. To address that challenge, Hartz brought retail media planning, execution, and reporting in-house to make faster decisions.
For Dunn, the growing supply of streaming inventory makes attention data increasingly valuable. “Not every impression is equal,” she noted. She emphasized that the context of an ad and the environment in which it appears matter when making media investment decisions.
Vanderhook emphasized that marketers need attention data they can act on. “They want two things: one, tie it out to outcomes,” he said. “And then two, don’t make me fight internally within the brand to activate on attention.”
He pointed out that automating those decisions would make it easier for marketers to act on attention data and improve campaign performance.
The discussion also turned to how brands are adapting their creative strategies to connect with different audiences as media options multiply.
“We no longer just think about creating a TV commercial. We think about creating a creative umbrella, and then all the different assets that fit underneath that umbrella,” Sporkin said.
She described Ferrero’s approach as precision at scale, developing major campaigns alongside creative tailored to different audiences. For Kinder Joy, that means targeting grandparents with one message and Harry Potter fans with another, for example.
Kageyama also emphasized the importance of emotional authenticity in creative, particularly the moments that resonate with pet owners, such as a dog wagging its tail or a cat eagerly enjoying a treat. He said those moments reflect the content pet owners naturally share on social media.
Make every impression count
Tim Vanderhook, CEO and co-founder of Viant, closed the event by outlining how brands can incorporate attention into campaign planning, activation, measurement, and optimization.
“Attention is not the outcome; it is the gate that opens up and allows the downstream outcomes to happen,” he explained.
Vanderhook recommended starting with one campaign, one business KPI, and one quarter, then comparing the results after making changes.
