CANNES — When you’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars, you tend to want to see a provable return on investment.
That is why so many marketers are now searching for more meaning from their ad metrics that than proxy datapoints.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Mark Weinstein, CMO, Hilton, explains why he wants to know whether audiences are really paying attention.
Attention rising
Across the digital ad world, “attention” is rising as a potential metric, even a currency, to fit the new reality of withering digital identifiers.
Dentsu has worked with eye-tracking company Lumen to develop its own currency, EACPM, effective attention cost per thousand. Other currencies are being mooted, too, including Attention Units (AUs) and ePMs (attentive seconds per thousand).
Weinstein rates attention as “a really interesting emerging area for us”.
More accountability
“We have to be accountable for the dollars we’re spending,” he says.
“We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars across the globe to do this, but is it working? Are we actually getting customers to pay attention?
“I don’t know where this is going. I don’t really know the answer will get to the end of the day … If we could find those right metrics to use, that’d be of high interest to us.”
Weinstein says he wants to find better “leading indicators” – metrics that can correlate long-term customer lifetime value back to media spend, rather than just attributing short-term effectiveness.
‘Tell our story’
But Hilton has its own part to play, too.
To combat the demise of attention spans, Weinstein says the group must “find our credible voice” rather than be all things to all people, and must “find people who can tell our story for us”, whether consumers, advocates or publishers.
While Hilton won’t necessarily control the exact tone of each of those depictions, “enough people talking about you credibly in authentic ways to their audiences” is a net win, Weinstein says.
If you need us, we’ll be staying here. https://t.co/vk3eJ8ieYE
#HiltonForTheStay pic.twitter.com/IeBhxjk2kE— Hilton (@Hilton) July 20, 2022
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.
For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
Beet.TV is an official partner of Cannes Lions.
