There’s more than meets the click
With this generation’s fast information processing and demand for instant gratification, consumer attention has become tough to catch, tougher to hold, and impossible to track.
What exactly is attention? According to the IAB, attention can be defined as “a consumer looking at or listening to an ad at the time they were exposed to it”. It’s being billed as the ‘next-generation KPI’ for determining meaningful consumer engagement and ROAS*. But while you can see how many viewers clicked through your ad, what was it exactly about that ad that worked, what didn’t, and why? You want the full story on your ad’s performance before making any decisions on what to do next. Attention metrics are becoming a key piece of this answer, but knowing if a user’s attention is active vs. passive is critical.
You’re getting attention, but is it the RIGHT attention?
There’s many ways to measure attention: a click or a viewcount can certainly show that your content is getting in front of the consumer, but attention is a spectrum. In the age of second screens, our favorite Gen-Z viewer can click open your page and get distracted by a text on their phone as the Time-on-Page metric goes up and up and up.
Active Attention is a deterministic measurement of the moments within an interactive video when consumers are actively engaging. It takes into account object-level data (the isolated interaction metrics on the individual products or creative elements in that video) and other intentional user signals (like hover rate, click rate, scene saves, scroll rate, etc) to provide a detailed look at what gets the consumer to lean-in and why.
These deterministic user signals go a step beyond other common attention measurement methodologies, like biometric or eye-tracking, which often require opt-in and incorporate general site interaction vs. ad creative interaction.
By looking at the elements in a video that consumers are actively engaging with and merging it with the time they spend engaging, we’re able to score video creative into a first-of-its kind Active Attention Index.
Through the Active Attention Index, every moment of engagement creates a digital consumer fingerprint, a detailed one-of-a-kind narrative that tracks the full experience of that consumer. We’re able to qualify user attention based on the time spent with the asset and the quantity of interactions across a specific video creative. The results are analyzed and compared to other impressions that utilized other strategies, tracking what produced the higher performances. Imagine what you could do with this type of insight and granularity – the creative versioning, testing, and optimization opportunities – this is where the creative content gets really creative.
Knowing what drives engagement improves the experience for all
With this hyper-accurate insight on consumer behavior, you’re better equipped to make informed decisions when it comes to your next creative campaign. Measuring true consumer attention will help brands and agencies inform their creative strategy in real time and allow publishers to target the right ads to specific audiences and content segments. And pairing the Active Attention Index with contextual data, like time of day and day of the week, will allow for better optimizations in-flight and maximize an ad’s performance vastly.
And, don’t forget, as the content improves, so will the user experience, leading to increased brand loyalty, repeat visits, and increased revenue. Active Attention bridges the gap between brand and consumer by letting the consumer show you what they’re looking for when it comes to their own journey. Present a path and let them lead the way.
The Active Attention Index proves the real, organic moments of engagement that advertisers are looking for when it comes to digital ads.
For more information on KERV’s Active Attention Index download our free guide.
* Source: https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/why-marketers-leaning-attention-vs-viewability-metrics
