How Do You Measure Ad Attention?

As the digital ad industry adjusts to the changing ad measurement landscape and shifts its focus to attention as the new metric, it begs some questions, like exactly how do you measure ad attention? Perhaps even more important, how do you do that in a privacy friendly way? Can you track precisely how a person interacts with your brand and keep that person anonymous? Can you measure detailed information about how they engaged? With what product, image, message, offer, etc? For how long? What they preferred? What they ignored? How do you tell if engagement was done by a real human or a bot? Can you do it at scale? And can you use any of this attention data to help with retargeting efforts or ad optimization?

The answer to these questions is a resounding yes, but it depends on the methodology used to measure ad attention. Many of the latest technologies offering some form of attention metrics or attention tracking are opt-in alternatives where a consumer must download an app and opt-in to have their attention tracked, usually by eye tracking. Others use panels of consumers to measure attention and associate their findings with publishers thus generating a way to rate publishers based on their strength relative to attention. While these methods of tracking ad attention certainly have their value, they’re hard to scale and get mass adoption.

Let’s be blunt, in a privacy-safe conscious world, it’s highly skeptical that you can convince the masses to allow advertisers to track their eye movements. There are solutions that do offer more scale. Some use an impression tag to detect things about the environment surrounding the ad which can provide attention signals. This is certainly a step forward but it fails to measure exactly how a consumer engages within the ad unit itself, it doesn’t answer many of the pressing questions a brand manager would want to know about what was paid attention to. To get that kind of detail, the kind all marketers want to know, you need to go deeper.

Mobile Sensors Are the Answer

Enter mobile sensors. They can be found in every smart phone, wearable as well as in headsets and devices used to access the metaverse. On your common phone there’s an average of twenty different sensors. Things like the compass, gyroscope, magnetometer, and more. They can detect everything from how you’re holding your phone to the temperature of your current environment to the direction in which you’re presently walking. The interesting thing about all these sensors when they’re applied to advertising is that they can also be used to detect and measure detailed consumer activity on digital ads. And in an industry highly dependent on data, this is game-changing.

To the consumer, a sensor-based ad could be anything from an ordinary, static display ad to one that has simple reactive effects that catch the eye and drive engagement. They can also be more advanced rich media ads, called dimensional display ads, that can feature advanced creative effects like interactive video, 3D models, 360 degree immersive content, augment reality, virtual reality and elements of the metaverse. They can be gamefied, provide virtual tours, feature virtual product demos, have reveals, change as they’re engaged with, just about anything— the creative possibilities are limitless.

Ads powered by mobile sensors are ultimately ad experiences the consumer controls, the consumer engages on their terms, they’re free to explore without having to click and the content responds to them personally. The benefits of this shift in control cannot be understated and the results to date of ads that function in this manner have been outstanding. Give consumers an ad experience that responds to them where they have control and you’ll see ad attention soar.

For advertisers, the benefit is a better performing ad that delivers a whole new set of attention data that is also collected in a privacy friendly manner. That’s because mobile sensors don’t need to know who you are to deliver a better ad experience to you. What they do is track behavioral data that can be in turn be used to identify trends, track interest and intent, spot opportunities for optimization, A/B test and ultimately impact every single stage of the marketing funnel.

Getting Started with Ad Attention Metrics

Whether your appetite for ad attention data is big or small, you can begin to measure ad attention today and ease your way into the attention metrics landscape. Using mobile sensor technology like that patented by Advrtas, advertisers can choose the level of attention tracking and have access to the level of data that suits them. They can use motion sensor technology to check key attention vitals of their current display ad campaigns, like was their ad even see by a real human. If they want to check for some basic attention metrics and drive ad engagement, they can ad simple effects that respond to the user. They can also access more advanced forms of attention metrics by using dimensional display ads that can provide much more granular data. Regardless of whether they babystep or go all in, we can expect to see more and more brands turn to attention metrics to help drive brand objectives as they discover that indeed you can measure ad attention at scale. It all starts with the sensors found in your favorite hand-held device!

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You might also enjoy this post about how the ad industry will shift from clicks to attention metrics. Check it out here.