CANNES – Consumers are dividing their time among a bigger selection of media channels and connected devices, and it’s not always clear whether they’re paying attention to advertisements that appear among their preferred choices of content. This uncertainty has spurred greater interest in measuring attention.
“Marketers really need to start focusing on attention as a metric, because an impression or an exposure unseen, unviewed, unimpacted does nothing for business,” Leah Meranus, chief media officer at branding and marketing agency dentsu X, said in this interview with at the Beet Villa during the Cannes International Festival of Creativity.
“We’re still understanding and defining what elements of attention we’re really trying to unpack, and then, of course, finding ways to quantify that in a consistent and scalable way,” Meranus said.
Dentsu has made attention measurement a bigger priority as marketers seek ad metrics that are more insightful than viewability and impressions. These improvements require the cooperation of media companies, measurement providers, advertisers and agencies to develop ways to set the value of ad transactions and key performance indicators.
“We can’t do it by ourselves,” Meranus said. “Coming up with consistent language metrics, KPIs, identifiers, a common language and a common currency that we can work towards together — this is the culmination of collaboration.”
As consumers return to their prepandemic behaviors of getting outside their homes more frequently, Meranus sees opportunities to reach people through out-of-home and portable audio formats such as podcasts. Amid the growing popularity of videogames, especially among younger consumers, there’s also the possibility to engage consumers who are immersed in such interactive digital content.
“At dentsu X, we think about experiences beyond exposure, and gaming is really an interesting space to do that,” Meranus said. “We think of creating value exchange by hacking the gaming spaces. We’re giving them something back for their attention and that’s really a nice sweet spot.”
You are watching ‘Attention Matters: New Ways to Build Community & Drive Engagement’, a Beet.TV Leadership Summit at Cannes Lions 2022, presented by WMX in partnership with dentsu.
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