Ebiquity, the world leader in media investment analysis, has released new research showing a "near-perfect correlation" between the amount of attention consumers pay to a particular media channel and the incremental profit delivered to advertisers by that channel. The report published recently showed a clear correlation between attention in media channels such as cinema, TV, or digital and the ROI profit those channels deliver to brand advertisers.

This research draws from the previous Profit Ability 2 dataset, which was published in partnership with GroupM, and included 141 econometric models across 14 different categories, to measure the incremental profit typically generated by ads in different media, including Online Display, Online Video, TV, Cinema, and OOH. It also includes eye-tracking data from Lumen Research, which measures attentive seconds per 1,000 impressions for each media channel. The correlation was close to perfect, in fact, at 0.979 (with 1 being a perfect correlation and 0 being no correlation at all).

Ryan Rooney, client & proposition director, at Ebiquity said “Intuitively we have always thought that attention would be a strong predictor of ROI, but having the sets of data come together to prove this is a great step forward. We're excited about collaborating with Lumen to do a lot more of this analysis with our respective clients.”

Isn't this obvious?

The knowledge that attention is required for advertising to work is as old as the hills, but advances in eye-tracking technology teach us that marketers have perhaps overestimated consumer attention to advertising in the past. While it is helpful to understand that attention leads to profit at the channel level, as is often the case, the devil is in the detail.

For example, when marketers are planning and buying online advertising campaigns, there are hundreds of thousands of possible media placements available. Each individual format has a different pattern of attention. Some might get zero attention despite being fully viewable, while others might receive a significant level of attention. Avoiding the former and optimising towards the latter, on an impression-by-impression level, is where the magic happens for brands.

Optimising towards attention

The Ebiquity report shows us that online display delivers £3 of incremental profit for every 1,000 impressions at a macro level, and that optimising towards attention is important. However, it is essential that optimisations are made at the micro level to distinguish which individual media placements will deliver consumer attention and which will not.

At Lumen Research, we have a predictive attention algorithm, trained on over 5 billion real-world eye movements from over 700,000 people. Our data is used by marketers from top brands and media agencies to plan, buy, measure, and optimise media investments towards more effective media.

A growing body of evidence

This research follows a study published by Havas Media Network earlier this year, which was the largest-ever study into the link between consumer attention to advertising and memory-based brand metrics, such as brand awareness, brand consideration, brand preference, and purchase intent. Brand Metrics and Lumen Research partnered with Havas on that research, which uncovered many commercially important insights — not least that the more attention your advertising achieves, the higher the brand scores across all four metrics.

It’s clear that attention is essential, and we see that brands optimising their media investments towards attention are achieving significantly better outcomes, reduced waste, and increased ROI from their advertising.

What’s really exciting is that as our knowledge of how people pay attention to advertising continues to deepen, so does our ability to optimise towards that attention.

Further reading

You can download the Ebiquity report from their website here

You can download the Havas whitepaper here:

Feel free to email hello@lumen-research.com if you would like any further information.

Lumen

Lumen Research is an eye-tracking technology company that is expanding our understanding of human attention, and helping brands to turn attention into action.   The company initially developed patented eye-tracking technology for creative attentio...

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