Robert Perry, Regional Director at Taboola
These days, it seems like everyone is paying attention to, well…attention. While no ‘silver-bullet’, attention provides a useful data point for marketers to use in measuring business impact. Not all attention, however, is created equal.
Yes, it's great to hook in audiences with buzz-worthy and eye-catching content. But attention isn't the ultimate measure of success. Just look at the media frenzy around Olivia Wilde's new film, “Don't Worry Darling". The movie is surrounded by controversy — and, as a result, attention — but is still being panned by critics for its lacklustre content.
Similarly, marketers should be cautious of relying too heavily on attention and views. As the September 2022 IAB Report on the Ad Attention Measurement Landscape shows, while ad attention definitely matters in determining business outcomes, it is not the only measurement that matters when it comes to ad effectiveness.
For a brand to truly stand out and make an impact, they must capture the right type of attention. That's why many marketers are now pushing beyond just counting views and, instead, focusing on whether or not customers actually digest and positively react to their ad messaging.
The question now is: How can you generate and measure the right type of attention at scale to build more effective and engaging campaigns?
Here's what you need to know.
Why attention isn't always what it seems
Like viewability, any definition of “attention" can be manipulated by different players across the industry. And marketers can get caught up in chasing attention without really understanding what it means.
As a result, publishers were led to jam pack above-the-fold real estate with ads to guarantee people would see those ads, even if they didn’t scroll. But at the end of the day, they ended up unintentionally pestering audiences with intrusive ad formats like pop-ups, fly-overs, magic carpets, and sound-on auto-play videos to meet advertiser demand for high levels of attention.
This created a race to the bottom that frustrated consumers with heavy ad loads and intrusive experiences — all at the expense of the almighty metric.
And to no one's surprise, this didn't bode well for the advertiser. If a reader is annoyed by a pop-up ad, the reader is annoyed with the brand AND the website that served the annoying pop-up. So while readers might see your brand and remember you, they might not have high brand sentiment.
So, where does that leave marketers?
How to garner authentic attention on trusted channels
Fortunately, there is a tried-and-true solution for driving attention in an authentic way: reach users at the moment they're open and receptive to consuming something new, also known as a ‘moment of next’. This means delivering the right ads when users are in the right mindset — specifically, when they’ve finished consuming content within a trusted environment like a premium news site, online magazine, blog, app, mobile device software, or other trusted source of information.
A Nielsen study found that ads viewed in non-disruptive environments, like below an article or in a newsfeed, drove 25% higher attentiveness than those placed in an interruptive environment like a pre-roll. In the study, 60 participants watched the same video ads on Taboola, Facebook and YouTube, all on a mobile device. Eye movements, a measure of participants’ attentiveness, were recorded. People had the lowest amount of responsive eye movements when watching YouTube’s pre-roll ads. It got better on Facebook, and even better with Taboola. As you can imagine, at Taboola we were pretty excited about that. The video ads in our feed prompted a 23% higher emotional response than YouTube, and a 13% higher emotion response than Facebook. So, ads positioned further down on a page — and even at the end of an article — are likely to gain more attention than those displayed elsewhere. The Nielsen eye-tracking study showed that participants rarely looked at the video ad playing when it’s in an intrusive environment, for example, Youtube’s pre-roll.
In psychology, the low attentiveness on Youtube is called ‘cognitive ad avoidance’ and it refers to consumers’ inattention, or their tendency to ignore ads that are playing when they’re not interested in watching them. They still may stick around because they don’t want to leave the experience altogether (in this case, because they want to watch another video after). According to a recent study, sometimes, intrusive experiences are even challenged by 'ad reactance' where the ad actually has the opposite effect and it creates a negative reaction to the brand.
To drive this point home, marketers have to reach audiences where they already are, not just on social and search platforms. As Statista reported in their 2021 Digital Advertising in Australia report: 23% of new brand discovery was through ads on websites.
And by running campaigns across news sites, marketers can rest assured that their ads are housed in a trustworthy environment and shown to audiences in the right context. In fact, a 2020 IAB study found that 84% of consumers feel advertising within the news increases or maintains brand trust.
Evidently, advertisers have a huge opportunity to reach consumers with messaging across publisher sites on the open web. Adding these channels to your media mix will not only maximize total attention, but also brand awareness, brand favourability, and ultimately consideration.
As a recent study from Kantar found that by adding native video ads on the open web to your media mix increased brand awareness by 26%. These ads also had a greater impact on brand favourability, consideration, and image when compared to social and streaming video ads alone. The uniqueness of the native format captures consumer attention effectively, positively impacting brand effectiveness.
How Kia Motors drove meaningful brand lift with native video ads
Kia Motors wanted to increase brand awareness with a video campaign focused on sustainability and carbon neutrality. But the car company was frustrated with the way search and social platforms limited how long videos play when they are exposed to viewers. So Kia worked with Taboola to launch native video ads across premium news sites in the U.S. and Korea.
As a result, Kia saw a 171% uplift in unaided awareness, 77% uplift in online ad awareness, and 26% increase in brand affinity in the U.S. On top of that, Kia also increased video completion rates by 30% in Korea. While the Kia study did not specifically measure attention, the increase in video completion rates serves as a good proxy for it.
Pay attention to how you attract attention
When planning your next campaign, remember that not all attention is good attention. So don't just throw ads into walled gardens or on publisher sites with disruptive experiences, and hope to get results.
Instead, it's important to diversify your ad mix to reach customers across trusted publisher sites where they are already active and ready to engage with new content. This way, you can improve awareness, brand recall, and customer experiences at scale.