SANTA BARBARA, CA – One of the big challenges for brands is being relevant in an environment of “continuous partial attention” on the part of consumers. That wasn’t an issue for AT&T at its recent Xandr Relevance Conference, according to Criteo’s Mollie Spilman.
“They’re trying to pull off something really unique, but I can tell you that the 200 or so people who are at this conference really are leaning in and really want it to happen,” Criteo’s COO says.
In this interview with Beet.TV at the conference, Spilman talks about the positive effect that speakers like Ariana Huffington and others have had on both minds and bodies.
“To get up this morning and hear [CEO] Brian Lesser unveiling Xandr, what they’re looking to accomplish, is really inspiring and compelling.”
While most people think of AT&T as a legacy telephone company, its ambition to become “a modern media company” represents “just such the right time with the right message,” says Spilman, who has been in advertising and media for nearly 30 years.
Contemplating the attention spectrum, she references the term “CPA” for continuous partial attention. “It really goes to show how important relevance in advertising is. Because in this world of fragmentation and fragmented attention, how do you market your products and services to this audience who has partial attention at any given time across devices?
“We’ve talked for years about addressable TV and measurability and how all these things are going to converge,” Spilman says. “And now with this combination of content, distribution, technology and marketing coming together, we have a shot. And that’s just really, really exciting and inspiring to me for somebody who’s been in this industry for a very, very long time.”
This video is part of a series leading up to, and covering the Xandr Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara. For more videos from the series, please visit this page. This Beet.TV program is sponsored by Xandr, a unit of AT&T.
