SALISBURY, CT – Dentsu International has embarked on a five-year journey to lead the charge in the attention economy. Now that journey is pointing it toward audio.
Previously, the company’s research into the economics of attention prompted it to introduce a new, attention-based media currency, the effective attention cost per a thousand (EACPM).
Now, in a large-scale study, it suggests audio could be the channel leading the attention pack.
Harnessing the Power of Audio
Cara Lewis, Chief Investment Officer at dentsu, says: “Audio’s having somewhat of a resurgence. It just made sense to go to the next channel that’s having that growth to really see the connection that consumers are making in the audio space.”
Audio, despite being a high-reach medium, has been traditionally overlooked due to its focus on listening rather than seeing. However, Lewis believes that this is exactly why it deserves further exploration in the attention economy.
To conduct this research, dentsu partnered with Lumen, looking to emulate environments that focus on audio. Lewis explains: “We’ve looked to them to look into environments that essentially emulate that audio and to see how we can build upon what is happening in the audio space.”
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Findings from the Study
The study, conducted with six different audio partners, revealed surprising results. Lewis says: “It ultimately beat out a lot of the dentsu norms that we have. They were higher than almost all of them, and essentially proved out that audio works, and that audio can create good attention.”
When it comes to different audio formats, such as podcasts, radio, and streaming, the results are equally enlightening. “Some of the key findings that we found across radio, podcasting and streaming are driving the highest impressions of attentive impressions.”
Lewis says audio brings high brand recall. “Streaming really had that brand recall, which is going along with what we’ve seen about streaming being a premium brand connection,” she says. “So it proved out a lot of things that we’re thinking about. It was just the highest that we’ve seen in terms of attention.”
