Brands and agencies are turning to attention metrics to drive better business outcomes

Brands and agencies are turning to attention metrics to drive better business outcomes

August 23, 2023  •  5 min read  •  Sponsored by Outbrain

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Gone are the days when viewability sufficed as a primary currency — the unit of value — for buying and selling ads. Instead, brands are moving toward establishing attention as the new currency as a part of an industry-wide push for measurement tools that focus on whether someone had an opportunity to absorb an ad’s message. While viewability tells advertisers that their ads were in a consumer’s view, it doesn’t provide much beyond that, but attention shows how engaged a consumer was, how they interacted with that ad, etc. 

For advertisers, attention has the opportunity to enhance their outcome-driven media buying. Instead of acquiring media solely based on impressions or reach, they can make purchases by gauging attention generated by an ad campaign. 

One issue with attention measurement is that not everyone defines it the same way, which could be one reason why it’s taking a bit longer for wide adoption. 

For example, Ayal Steiner, executive vice president of brand solutions at Outbrain, defines attention measurement as: “an efficacy score on media. Compared to legacy metrics, it’s a more reliable source for determining if people engaged with your ad and how. Taking it one step further, attention is primed to answer whether that meaningful interaction results in a real business outcome.”

Research increasingly shows a correlation between attention and outcomes throughout the funnel. 

With that in mind, brands and agencies need to understand the metrics that feed into attention as a currency, the data that fuels those metrics and the technology they can lean on to help them further optimize their campaigns with attention in mind. 

Comprehensively measuring attention relies on multiple metrics and data points 

First, it’s essential to identify which metrics quantify attention. Because attention is a compilation of measurements that signal interest and engagement, these can include engagement metrics, conversion rates, bounce rates, completion rates, click-through rates and more. 

Combining multiple metrics helps to provide a more comprehensive view of ad performance and, therefore, attention. 

From there, it’s about ensuring access to the data needed to fuel these metrics — impressions, click data, interaction data, conversion data, contextual data, etc. 

So, for example, to measure engagement, data such as time spent on the ad, the number of interactions — clicks, mouseovers or video plays — and social shares or related comments should be gathered. 

Additionally, data such as attention heatmaps that visually showcase the areas of an ad that see the most attention — which parts a user engages with the most — can help advertisers see where they can improve. Scroll depth can also identify how far a user moved down a page, indicating how much content they actually viewed. 

Some companies are putting these metrics together to effectively measure attention as an output to make it easier on advertisers, but no two are the same. 

“Companies like Adelaide, Lumen, PlaygroundXYZ and AmplifiedIntelligence, all have their own methodology for measuring attention,” Steiner said. “My best advice is to ensure you understand the build of the measurement platform you choose and its focus. Regardless of which one you choose, you will get some valuable insights into the efficacy of your media buying.”

Combining attention metrics with predictive AI technology for campaign optimization

Ingesting attention metrics into predictive AI technology provides an ideal view for marketers looking to optimize their spend toward high-attention environments. 

By combining many of the metrics and data points that fuel them, mentioned above, with predictive AI technologies, advertisers can get ahead — preparing for many users to see their ad and maximize that attention with a strong message and creative. Afterward, they can back up how well the campaign did and how accurate the prediction was with metrics to measure attention. 

For example, Outbrain’s new branding platform leverages the company’s AI-powered prediction technology in a new way: predicting the moments likely to drive attention by ingesting 1 billion context and interest signals per minute. Adelaide’s attention unit (AU) is also integrated into the system to analyze various media quality signals, eye-tracking data and full-funnel outcome data.

“According to previous research conducted by Adelaide, AU measurement and optimization have helped advertisers see an average of 31% upper-funnel and 56% lower-funnel lift,” Steiner said. “In partnership with Lumen, TVision and Amplified Intelligence, Dentsu also released a study proving the direct relationship between ad attention and brand outcomes. 

“Higher dwell times are associated with a greater likelihood to choose and recall a brand’s advertising, showing the impact in the top part of the funnel,” continued Steiner. “By leveraging Adelaide’s expertise and data analysis capabilities, Onyx can provide valuable insights into moments of high attention, optimize ad placements and offer brands a clear understanding of the quality and impact of their advertising efforts.”

Aside from identifying AI technology to lean on when optimizing ad placements for high-attention moments, advertisers should consider these essential tactics, which Steiner lists as a kind of mantra, “Creativity drives attention; interact, don’t interrupt; and optimize in real-time or near-time.” 

To win attention, advertisers need to stand out with creatives that feel less like ads and are more playful and interactive. And by monitoring campaign attention performance as a campaign runs, advertisers can optimize as they see changes in said performance. 

Attention is advertisers’ new currency

As attention continues gaining momentum as a valuable currency for advertisers, teams are working toward understanding the metrics and data points behind this currency to maximize their ad investments.

Viewability metrics can help determine whether to invest in a particular media, but attention metrics address more crucial aspects, such as the level of investment, media performance and the impact of brand messaging on audience attention. With the help of platforms and partners that can offer these insights, marketers can make more confident investment decisions, refine their media strategies to focus on more efficient attention sources and, ultimately, achieve better brand outcomes.

#AADigital: Are Attention Metrics the Future?

Tipping Point Will Be When Programmatic Can Buy on Time Metrics, Said Shenan Reed

By Alexandra Bruell. Published on April 14, 2015. 0 Reprints Reprints

Measuring ad performance against frequency and impressions is so yesterday. "Time spent" is now the hot new metric that buyers, sellers, measurement vendors and marketers are counting on to overcome viewability concerns and cross screens.
"There are two things that are proven to show recall recognition," said Tony Haile, CEO of Chartbeat, speaking on a panel addressing the topic of attention metrics at Ad Age's Digital Conference. "One is the quality of the creative. The second is the amount of time that ad acrues. Price on that time, and attention becomes a way for marketers to be more effective, and for publishers to have engaging content. The more they can capture in view, the more that ad is worth. It's a sustainable business model going forward."
It might be sustainable, but for now, the metric, which is being tested by the Financial Times, is not quite so widespread.
Dominic Good, global sales director for the FT, said that his team is currently evaluating the results of a pilot program with five test campaigns for separate brands, among which are BP and a few other industry giants. The promise, which takes care of brands' concern that their ads aren't in view, is that every ad is in view for five seconds or more.
"Big corporate advertisers are using this as a way to get more exposure, guarantee viewability and guarantee the ability to show complex creative," said Mr. Good. "We were getting a fantastic average and more exposed time than on a CPM basis." Although five seconds was the minimum standard, the average tended to be 15-20 seconds, he said.
The guaranteed and comparatively lengthy time the ad appears online also allows for more complex creative formats, said the panelists. "Now I have more to play with from a creative standpoint," said Melvin Wilson, head of strategy for the IPG Media Lab.
"If we're lucky we may get to a place where we start to equate [time spent] to GRPs on TV or potentially create a new metric for everyone against time," said Shenan Reed, president of digital for MEC North America. "The greatest challenge is to get TV and digital to talk to each other to get to a common success metric. If we do, we'll see those budgets flow freely. We're createing a free open marketplace that's screen agnostic."

"Next year, we'll be in a place where we're commonly saying we're buying on [time]." She wants to coin CP30, which is a play on CPM with the 30 referring to seconds. The true tipping point for measuring ads based on the amount of time users spend on those ads will come in two years when the programmatic space can buy against the metric, she said.
Beyond big brands, time metrics will be important for "low consideration" brands like paper towels and napkins as it supports "things we forget or don't see," said Mr. Wilson. He likened it to the Amazon buy button. "We see amazon get into that problem with the dash button. I think it's a touch in the right direction. If I can get you to spend five seconds with an ad and you push that button I win."
Time metrics won't work for the "the resalers of bulk impressions," said Ms. Reed. "Their metric for success is selling as many impressions as they can unload as quickly as they can unload them."

The SocialRank Index Shows Companies How They Stack Up On Social Media

Posted Jan 13, 2015 by Anthony Ha (@anthonyha)

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BlaBlaCar Expands Beyond Europe

Social media analytics startup SocialRank released a new tool earlier today called theSocialRank Index — aimed at tracking and aggregating the performance of the biggest brands in the world.

This seems like a natural evolution of SocialRank, which started out as a side project for identifying your “most valuable follower.” Not surprisingly, it expanded with new data points and filters, though the main buckets are still valuable, engaged, and “best” followers. (The last category being a combination of the other two.) It also developed features to show users the same data about their competitors.

Co-founder Alex Taub compared the new SocialRank Index to “Moneyball for brands” — Moneyball for X is probably a little overused in the startup world, but it’s actually reasonably illustrative here. Just as Moneyball (the book and the movie based on the book) depicts a new take on baseball recruiting that focuses the stats that really matter, SocialRank says it can help brands figure out if they’re really doing well on Twitter, not just by looking at their follower count and the number of engagements on their last tweet, but at more detailed, meaningful numbers that measure how they stack up against the competition, and against the best-known brands in the world.

So the index displays an average for all the brands on a given list — number of followers, number of verified followers, number of engagements, breakdowns by geography, breakdowns by follower count and more. It also shows how those numbers have changed over the past week. This data is provided for free, without registration, but if you want to see how your account compares, you have to log in.

There’s only one index for now, the Global Brands Index, which is based on Interbrand’s list of the best global brands of the past year. As a comparison, it’s probably a bit aspirational (though hey, it’s nice to know that TechCrunch has more followers than the average brand on this list) but there are plans to add similar indices for tech publications, tech companies and startups, retailers, and universities. Eventually, Taub said users will be able to create their own lists as well.

You can read more in this SocialRank blog post.

Facebook video views hit 1B daily

By Wendy Parish | September 9, 2014 print

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Dive Brief: 

• Facebook announced it has hit an average of one billion daily video views —and two thirds of those views are coming from mobile. 
• The social giant claims its auto-play videos have greatly contributed to the increase in consumption of video content, and it's announced plans to add even more tweaks to it's already video-friendly algorithm. 
• Along with the daily view announcement, Facebook revealed it will be adding a view counter to its videos, which could be a move to rival YouTube even more heavily. 

Dive Insight: 

Facebook has changed its news feed algorithm to favor videos uploaded directly to the site over YouTube videos. Though YouTube isn't hurting by any means — a study came out recently showing it outperformed all other social networks in terms of analyzing social campaigns. So while it's not likely Facebook will leave YouTube in the dust when it comes to videos, these changes do deeply affect the dynamic between the two sites. 

Recommended Reading

Advertising Age - Digital: Facebook's Strategy to Take on YouTube Comes Into View 
Marketing Land : Facebook Adds Display Of Video Views As They Soar Past 1 Billion Daily

The 5 Things Marketers Are Saying About Vine's Loop Count

 

Initial brand stats surprise By Christopher Heine

• July 2, 2014, 4:56 PM EDT
• Technology

A screengrab from a Tide Vine that has garnered 2.5 million "loops."

Vine yesterday revealed a "loop count" metric to show marketers and users how often people are watching their six-second videos. Prior to the metric's availability, they had to focus on likes, comments and revines (same as a retweet) to measure the impact of their social clips. Loops have replaced revines on the platform.

The development comes as a relief to brands such as Tide, Milk Bone, Charmin and Red Vines that regularly put resources into the 18-month-old social media platform.

Here's what marketers had to say about Vine's "loop count."

1. It's about time. Prior to the metric, marketers couldn't see how many views they were generating on Vine. Loops help brands justify putting budget toward the social videos.

"With digital/mobile spend being under intense scrutiny, the ability to measure the performance of content is key," explained Michael Kelly, senior media/consumer communications manager at American Licorice Company, which owns Red Vines. "Having an understanding of which content is keeping viewers engaged can a help to inform the creative direction or style of the Vines made in the future."

Slaven Radic, CEO of Tapstream, said the metric "will be a significant [key performance indicator] to watch for certain types of campaigns as in a sense it speaks to the video’s engagement level with the audience, something we couldn’t measure quite as directly before."

2. It shows major brands can gain traction. A quick scan of Vines shows bigger numbers than one might expect. Single efforts by Ford (3.4 million loops), Charmin (2.4 million) and Buick (1.3 million) are bringing in surprising numbers. To be clear, though, not all of those brands' efforts have performed so well virally. But once again, financials come to the forefront: It's going to be a lot easier turning these stats in to the brand CFO when compared to a few hundred comments and several thousand likes. And bigger numbers are going to please sales teams for social media marketing vendors.

"[Before], we would have to sell brands influencer videos, without knowing the impressions," said Eric Dahan, CEO of influencer marketing firm Instabrand.

3. Make the metric real. The loop count is far from perfect. Vines play automatically and can keep looping to drive up the loop number, and there's no guarantee anyone is watching. Twitter, Vine's parent, would be wise to ensure that the loop stats represent something close to reality.

"The trick for Vine will be ensuring authenticity," said Jill Sherman, vp/group director, social, content strategy, DigitasLBi. "Vanity metrics can be rigged. We've see this with fake fans and paid likes. If Vine can overcome this, the loop count will inevitably carry some bragging creds."

4. Please give us unique viewer metrics. Since Vine's looping feature also enables the count to include numerous views by a single person, it doesn't give marketers the clearest sense of the size of the audience they are reaching. And brands welcome more data.

A unique viewer number would enable them "to effectively compare the performance of marketing efforts on Vine relative to other platforms such as Facebook," Kelly from Red Vines said. "You can't compare what you can't measure. Vine's ability to earn a spot in marketer's media plans will depend on their ability to provide measureable data that marketers can use to gauge the performance of their efforts."

5. It could drive up what Vine influencers get paid to work with brands. At least that's what influencer marketing folks such as Instabrand's Dahanwould lead you to believe.

"Influencers are all of sudden rethinking their rates across the board and now feel that they have the leverage to charge what they should," he claimed. "In addition, influencers incentives are now aligned with brands since now they're truly able to charge based on impression, meaning the better the content, the better the payout." 

Here's that Charmin's big Vine loops generator mentioned earlier in the post.

15 Blog KPIs You Should Already Be Tracking

by Pamela Vaughan

January 13, 2014 at 8:00 AM

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Anyone who manages a business blog knows all too well that the darn things require quite a bit of commitment.

The bright side is, they can also be extremely rewarding from a return-on-investment perspective. But how do you know if all that commitment is actually leading to a positive ROI? Analytics, my friends. Analytics. 

As someone who pulls together the monthly report for this very blog, I thought I'd share the metrics I track on a monthly basis (and for certain metrics, much more frequently) to report on the progress and success of our blogging efforts.

15 Blogging KPIs You Should Be Tracking

1) Overall Blog Visits

In other words, how many visits does your blog rake in in a given period of time? Tracking this on a monthly basis will give you a good sense of whether you're growing traffic to your blog over time and insight into monthly trends. For example, is January typically a strong month for your blog? Are there certain months in which your blog's performance is particularly sub-par? Picking up on these trends allows you to plan your strategy differently for months you know are known to be challenging.

HubSpot customers can easily track this metric using the Sources tool (pictured below). Google Analytics is another option for non-HubSpot users.

2) Traffic Source Breakdown

Where is the traffic to your blog coming from? Social media? Organic search? Referrals? Of those sources, which social networks, keywords, and websites are sending visitors your way? Knowing how your blog visits break down can give you insight into your high-performing channels as well as under-utilized ones. Where is your biggest opportunity for growth? Could your blog subscriber emails use some optimization to drive more traffic to your blog? Are you neglecting your blog's SEO?

This information is also accessible via the HubSpot Sources report or Google Analytics.

3) Blog Homepage Visits 

Of your overall blog visits, how many can be attributed to the homepage of your blog? Knowing this will give you a sense of whether your visitors use your blog as a destination site (i.e. direct traffic is a big driver of your visits, and visitors typically enter your blog's URL into their browser to get to you) vs. one that gets found through indirect sources. This will also give you a sense of the type of visitors you typically attract. For example, a lot of direct traffic is an indication of repeat visitors, whereas more traffic from indirect sources usually indicates a higher proportion of new visitors. Furthermore, if you notice that your homepage is generating a lot of your traffic, you might want to diagnose the efficiency of that homepage. Is it optimized for lead gen? What pieces of low-hanging marketing fruit is it missing? 

In HubSpot, customers can track this metric via the Page Performance tool (see below). Google Analytics is again an option for non-HubSpot users.

4) Number of Posts Published 

Tracking the sheer number of blog posts published in a given time period is easy -- and great for identifying correlations between blogging volume/frequency and other results like traffic and leads. Our benchmarking data shows that blogging more leads to more traffic and leads, but what about for your blog in particular?

This metric is easy to count manually, but an export of HubSpot's Page Performance reportcan provide this data (along with the next four metrics) easily, too.

5) Top Viewed Posts 

Which posts are you real traffic drivers? Identifying these posts can help you analyze the topics, types, and formats of blog posts that are your bread and butter for raw visits. Having a traffic problem? Now you'll know which types of posts to create to solve it! 

HubSpot's Page Performance tool is your go-to for this metric. Just sort by views in the user interface or in the Excel export. Google Analytics can also help here as well.

6) Average Views per Post

This metric is good for understanding how each individual blog post contributes to overall traffic. It's also a great metric for understanding the correlation between volume/frequency and results. If you're publishing more, but your posts' average views go down, this means each individual post you publish is getting fewer views. This could be an indication that you're sacrificing quality for the sake of quantity -- and generating the same results. Could you generate the same results with fewer, but higher quality posts that lead to a higher quality blog overall? A similar metric to look at here is median views -- which is great when you have one or two over- or under-performing posts that might skew your averages. 

Again, the Page Performance tool, exported and analyzed is your best friend for this one if you're a HubSpot customer. Non-HubSpot users can fall back on Google Analytics.

7) Average Inbound Links per Post

Are you creating content worth linking to? Inbound links are extremely valuable currency in the land of search engines. It indicates to search engines that your content is valuable to others and worth ranking well in search results. Keep track of your average inbound links so you can keep tabs on the quality of your content (more important than ever in the eyes of Google) and thus, your inbound links' impact on your search authority.

And the winner is ... HubSpot's Page Performance! Not a customer? Google can help you out in your Google Webmaster account.

8) Average Comments per Post 

Although many consider the number of comments to be mainly a vanity metric, tracking engagement and sentiment among your readers definitely has its place. Use this to gauge your audience's reaction to your content and how involved your community is. If engagement is low, experiment with ways to encourage it: Pose questions in your content, try new types of content that might elicit a response, and get involved in the discussion in the comments of your posts as well. When your readers feel more engaged with your content, they'll be more likely to come back in the future, share your posts with others, and help you expand your reach.

HubSpot customers can get this from, you guessed it -- Page Performance! Otherwise, you'll need to rely on your individual blogging platform's analytics for this data.

9) Social Shares per Post 

While also somewhat of a vanity metric, number of social shares per post will give you a good sense of which types of content perform well in social media -- and in which social networks in particular. This can inform decisions about which types of content to promote in social (and on what networks specifically) for the best ROI. You might find that content that performs well on Twitter, for instance, does very poorly in a social network like LinkedIn. Use these insights to improve your social media marketing strategy as it relates to blog promotion.

Track your posts' overall social shares -- as well as a breakdown of the top four social networks -- using LinkTally.com, a free tool created by HubSpot's social media scientist, Dan Zarrella.

10) New Blog Leads (and Customers!)

Traffic is all well and good, but leads (and customers!) are a much better indicator of your blog's impact on your business' bottom line. Track how well your blog is contributing to lead and customer generation over time. In doing so, you'll be able to identify correlations between variables such as content volume, frequency, etc. and lead/customer generation effectiveness. You'll also be able to diagnose inefficiencies in your lead gen strategy. Is your truly blog optimized for lead gen?

To measure leads and customers from your blog, you'll need software with closed-loop reportingcapabilities.

HubSpot users, for example, can measure new contacts and customers generated by their blog via the Sources report for their landing pages (look at referrals, then your blog's subdomain), or, for Enterprise customers, by creating a custom Contacts report (see below) to track this data.

11) Lead Source Breakdown 

Take it one step further by identifying the sources your blog leads are coming from. Do you generate more blog leads from email than social media? Pair this with your traffic source data for even meatier insight: For instance, if you notice social media isn't a great source of blog leads but is one of the top traffic sources for your blog, you might want to focus on finding ways to fix that discrepancy so you can generate more leads from all that social media traffic. 

In HubSpot, Enterprise users can see this lead source breakdown via a custom Contacts report.

12) Top Lead/Customer Gen Posts 

And if you really want to improve your blog's lead (or customer) gen potential, you need to dig into the data even deeper. One great way to do this is by analyzing your individual posts' lead gen effectiveness. A report that breaks down your blog's lead gen by post will give you a sense of the types of content that are great for generating leads. Does the topic matter? What about the format? This way, you can learn which types of posts are your true lead drivers and have that insight handy whenever you're behind on your leads goals. Same goes for generating customers! 

Again, HubSpot customers can use the Sources report for their landing pages and dig one level deeper to see new contacts/customer counts for each individual post. Furthermore, Enterprise customers can create a custom Contacts report broken for blog leads broken down by first page seen to gather this data. 

13) Conversion Rate

Calculate your conversion rates (visit-to-lead and lead-to-customer) to understand the relationship between traffic, leads, and customers. This can help you pinpoint what you should be focusing on when making improvements to your blog. If you improve your visit-to-lead conversion rate for example, you can generate even more leads from the same amount of traffic. On the other hand, you could also increase lead/customer generation by increasing traffic and keeping your conversion rates steady. Track this over time to understand how changes to your blogging strategy and tactics are affecting your ability to convert visitors and leads.

Here's a handy online calculator for calculating conversion rates. If you're a HubSpot customer, we'll do you one better -- the Sources tool calculates conversion rates for youautomatically!

14) Active RSS Subscribers

How many people are subscribed to your blog via RSS? More importantly, how many of those subscribers actively check your feed? The number of active subscribers you have is a great metric for evaluating how many loyal, dedicated readers you've attracted and retained. It's also a great indicator of your blog's stickiness. Do people just visit your blog once, never to return? Or do they love your content so much they want to keep coming back for more? Generating more and more of the latter type of visitor means you're growing a group of content evangelists who are more likely to share your content, sing your praises, and expand your reach to more potential readers.

For HubSpot customers, RSS subscribers can be accessed via Page Performance. Keep in mind that HubSpot's reporting gives you the number of active subscribers who have accessed your blog's feed in the last day -- weeding out inactive subscribers who may have added your feed to their RSS reader once but never checked it later and giving you a more accurate report on your RSS subscribers. It also provides a quick look at how this number has changed over time. If you're not a HubSpot customer, check your RSS feed account for more information about how your subscriber count is calculated.

15) Email Subscribers 

Last, but definitely not least, we have another breed of subscribers -- your email subscribers. Email subscribers have all of the same benefits of RSS subscribers and more, since these subscribers have given you access to their precious inboxes. As a result, there's a direct correlation between the number of email subscribers you have and the amount of email traffic you generate to your blog. If you haven't put a lot of effort into generating email subscribers, you're sitting on a gold mine of opportunity, my friends. Get started with these tips for converting casual visitors into dedicated subscribers. Then beef up your blog subscriber emails so you're getting the most out of them with these best practices.