For years at Inskin, and now as part of Azerion, we’ve been championing the value of attention in advertising. By working with the likes of Lumen and Sticky we’ve been raising awareness of its importance and studying the creative levers that can drive it.

Attentions’ star continues to rise in the ad industry - studies and commentary on it are everywhere which can be a blessing and a curse. At Azerion we are driving the narrative beyond base measurement to look at the quality of attention.

Our insights team found in numerous studies that High Impact Display formats deliver significantly more consumer attention than standard display. But high attention scores shouldn’t be the sole measure of campaign success, and they don’t tell the whole story behind a campaign's effectiveness.   

After all - pop ups deliver lots of attention, but at what cost to the user experience or the perception of the advertiser (or the publisher hosting the creative)?

Understanding the creative levers that link attention to brand performance is critical to ensure the competitive advantage offered by attentive formats doesn’t become another commodity that can be gamed by bad actors.

By investigating the value of creative attention we have shown that brands in different sectors need to think about attention and creativity differently, and leverage the capabilities of an ad format to suit their objectives.

At MAD//Fest we will share some of the highlights and insights from our recent creative attention projects. This shows that some brands and industry sectors need less attention to drive a bigger impact. 

We’ve also conducted a meta-analysis of more than 200 visual engagement studies from our clients to garner some insights into what type of creative assets, placement and execution drive attention.

At MAD//Fest we will hear from one of our advertising partners, Jasmine Locking, Digital Marketing Manager at Karl Lagerfeld, who will share her thoughts on the value and quality of attention. She will also explain how attention can differ from impulse purchase to premium brands, and how creative attention measurement can help optimise future campaign asset development.

It’s also important to consider the impact of attention in a forced exposure test environment, compared to more natural browsing experiences - as we’ve seen that in the real world high impact premium formats tend to get more attention, whereas standard formats get even less.

So what's next?

Well now Azerion has combined the talents and expertise of companies like Collective, Inskin and Sublime, and has partnerships with gaming leaders such as Bidstack, we're excited to evolve our measurement and insight across a much larger suite of products, services and platforms.

Attention may be the industry's current hot topic, but I feel we've only scratched the surface. 

Dom will be speaking at ATTENTION@MAD//Fest on 6 July. Click here to get your early bird ticket.