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The so-called attention economy is fractured, and its leaders largely disagree about how and when publishers should guarantee attention to advertisers.
While vendors are largely bullish on attention guarantees and their potential impact on the advertising market, other industry players tend to be more cautious.
Omnicom Media Group agency OMD continues to conduct attention measurement research, but according to its chief investment officer Kelly Metz, it’s impossible to guarantee attention at scale unless the industry standardizes attention metrics.
Rob Hall, CEO of GumGum attention measurement firm Playground xyz, has a different perspective. He supports duration-based attention guarantees, or the concept that all advertising should engage viewers for a number of seconds. If it were up to him, publishers would begin guaranteeing attention greater than zero seconds as soon as possible.
Hall and Metz shared their perspectives with ADWEEK.
These interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
How could attention-guaranteed buys change the industry?
Hall: It’s hard to argue there’s any value when attention is not present at all. Like viewability, advertisers shouldn’t pay for ads with no attention, and publishers should be creating advertising experiences accordingly.
We believe that brands are on a journey to understand how much attention they need in order to drive a specific outcome (be that brand or sales lift). At Playground xyz we call this optimal attention.
This makes the notion of attention-guaranteed buys much more interesting because different brands (and their different creative executions) all require different amounts of attention to move the needle on outcomes. A leading fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brand might require two seconds of attention on its ad to drive outcomes, while a challenger brand in finance might require six seconds.
Unlike viewability, where everyone is chasing the same inventory (i.e. 70%+ viewable), this focus on attention means that the FMCG brand and the finance brand are actually going after different pockets of inventory. Publishers can package and price that inventory accordingly, and the brands will be able to know they are hitting their optimal attention goals that in turn drive brand or sales lift.
