Using Attention Metrics, Publishers Aim to Prove Their Ads Work

Publishers have long struggled to prove the efficacy of their digital ad products to brand partners, but in the last year, media companies including Condé Nast and Insider have begun experimenting with attention-based ad metrics to more clearly quantify their value, ultimately looking to drive more ad revenue. Using attention-based metrics—devised often by a mix of eye-tracking software, machine learning and feedback from focus groups—to determine the value of specific ad products can help publishers better tie brand marketing campaigns to outcomes, a measurement capability that could lead to larger direct deals and higher yields in programmatic auctions. For marketers, the technology brings clearer attribution to brand campaigns, prompting interest from both camps. Audi, Mars, Nespresso Embrace Ad Effectiveness With New Attention Metrics In fact, according to an April survey from DoubleVerify, 94% of publisher respondents described attention-based capabilities as important to their business in 2023, while 96% of advertisers said they plan to rely on attention-based metrics in either most or some of their ad buys. Attention appears to validate what publishers have always pitched but rarely proved, said Deborah Brett, the global chief business officer at Condé Nast. “For us, attention is proof of value,” Brett said. “Whereas historically it was more of a perception—everyone knows an ad in Vogue is going to break through—this helps us demonstrate that value in the bidstream.” Traditionally, publishers have used brand lift and recall studies to demonstrate the value of clients’ brand marketing campaigns, methods that cost money and require an extended period of time to produce results, making them nearly impossible to optimize against in real-time, said Neala Brown, the senior vice president of strategy and insights at Teads. Turning attention into revenue Publishers that have begun experimenting with attention metrics say that the technology could translate to an uptick in ad revenue through two routes. First, publishers can use attention metrics in direct-sold campaigns to prove the efficacy of their ad products, which could lead to repeat business or larger buys. When [viewability] was used as a currency it created a marketplace for highly viewable, gamed inventory.Chao Liao, the senior vice president, Insider Advertising In a case study conducted with Moat, Condé Nast found that its environments yielded rates of attention 32% higher than industry benchmarks. In an analysis of its own partnerships, Teads found that premium publishers outperform on attention metrics, driving attention levels at least three times higher than Facebook. “Branded budgets tend to decrease in economic moments like this,” Brown said. “So when you have a way of measuring brand performance, those correlations are very important to the buy side.” Publishers also envision a future in which attention metrics are included in bid-stream data, allowing media buyers to set attention thresholds in their programmatic buys, said Angelina Eng, the vice president of measurement, addressability and data center at the IAB. Similar to when first-party data is included in the bidstream, the information could help the bids fetch higher ad yields. Still, publishers fear that if programmatic auctions begin to treat attention as a currency, it could suffer the same fate as viewability. “Viewability was great for eliminating non-viewable inventory, but when it was used as a currency it created a marketplace for highly viewable, gamed inventory,” according to Chao Liao, the senior vice president at Insider Advertising. “It went from a basement to a currency. We want attention to be about ad effectiveness.” Lack of industry consensus Despite the early traction, the industry has yet to adopt a consensus definition of attention, said Eng. But the framework broadly aims to gauge the impact of an ad by measuring and combining key variables, such as the quality of the domain and placement of the product, into a composite score, often referred to as an attention unit (AU). Vendors in the space, including Adelaide, Lumen and IAS, use different methods to produce their grades, but they share a fundamental philosophy, said Marc Guldimann, the founder and chief executive of Adelaide. May the Best Attention Metric Win “Publishers have always faced this Faustian bargain of whether they should optimize for revenue per user or user experience,” Guldimann said. “Metrics like viewability and completion rate do not respect the user, so great publishers can perform poorly against those metrics. Attention helps publishers illustrate the quality of the product they are selling.” The technology also functions in cookieless environments, adding further appeal for marketers looking for durable measurement solutions, and it dovetails neatly with a broader embrace of contextual products.

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Using Attention Metrics, Publishers Aim to Prove Their Ads Work

Condé Nast and Insider have begun experimenting with attention-based ad metrics

Mark Stenberg

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