The attention wars: 5 raging arguments shaping the future of advertising

Everyone keeps talking about it, but what actually is attention? Well, put simply, it’s an advertising metric that evaluates if somebody actually looks at an ad, and for how long.

It’s about ensuring an ad is not just viewable, but actually viewed – and for enough time that a person can absorb its message, create memory structures, and consider taking action.

After years of growing interest, attention has become one of adland’s hottest topics. But if there’s one thing even hotter than attention, it’s arguments about attention.

From Professor Byron Sharp to Peter Field, and Dr. Karen Nelson-Field to Mark Ritson, everyone’s got an opinion. 

So, in the spirit of pouring petrol on an already blazing fire, let’s look at the top five fiercest arguments going on today and, with the help of the experts at Lumen Research, see if we can make any sense of them.

Viewability has been one of the key indications of digital advertising quality over the last two decades. It’s a metric that measures how many ad impressions could actually be seen by a person on their screen – but crucially, it’s not a measure of how many people do look at the ad.  

Attention research, using state-of-the-art eye-tracking technology, suggests there is a big difference in effectiveness between an ad being viewable and an ad actually being viewed. Others dispute the validity of that claim, arguing that viewability is as good an indicator of effectiveness, if not better.  

So, is it true that good old fashioned viewability is all advertisers need? 

For: 

In the summer of 2024, Kroger Precision Marketing analysed the impact of DoubleVerify’s Authentic Attention product and could not find an uplift in clicks or sales driven by the ads that DoubleVerify claimed were ‘high attention’.

However, the analysis did find a positive correlation between viewability and sales.  

On publishing this research, Cara Pratt, Senior Vice-President at Kroger, branded attention a ‘modern vanity metric’.  

Against:  

Ask advertisers if they would like their ads to be actually looked at, and most would answer ‘yes’. And there’s good evidence to support the validity of that.

A massive analysis of hundreds of campaigns from three blue-chip advertisers in the UK, conducted by PwC, compared the click-through rate of ads that were merely viewable to those that were likely to be actually viewed. 

The result? A clear win for attention over viewability.

The Lumen verdict: 

Lumen, unsurprisingly, backs its own data. In fact, co-founder and CEO Mike Follett says: “Not all attention data is equal, so buyer beware. Lumen’s attention models are based on real human eye tracing data, collected from over 700,000 people across 37 countries. Maybe this is why our models work - and others are less successful.”

Ouch.

If attention metrics are such a powerful business tool, perhaps they should be standardised so that publishers, brands and agencies can transact with confidence. There are many who would argue that this is the necessary next step to drive the attention movement forward.

But does human attention fit into such neat buckets? 

For:   

The argument for standardisation is based on the need for transparency and trust. The media landscape is complicated enough without bringing in more complexity and black boxes.

This seems to be the driving force behind the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)’s Attention Task Force, led by Angelina Eng of the IAB and Ron Pinelli at the Media Rating Council (MRC). A similar initiative is being led by Paul Donata and Tracy Adams at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF).  

And some standardised attention thresholds are already being proposed. Amplified Intelligence has suggested that ads require a minimum of 2.5 seconds of attention to drive memory formation - a threshold over 80% of ads fail to reach. Perhaps this should be the lower limit of what counts as a ‘viewed’ ad? 

Against:   

Lumen argues that while more attention is usually a good thing, there is no invariable lower threshold for attention. For some brands and some objectives, you may only need 1 second of attention for the ad to ‘work’.

Other times, and with other objectives such as consideration, your ads will require a significantly longer duration of attention.

The business demonstrated this perspective in a recent report, published in partnership with Havas Media Network and Brand Metrics.

This analysis of over 9,000 brand lift studies, conducted with over 1.8 million people, showed that when an advertiser simply wants to raise awareness of a brand, 1 second of attention per impression may be enough as long as the frequency is high enough.

But when the same advertiser wants to drive consideration or purchase intent, it will need longer periods of attention per impression.

So 1 second of attention ten times is best for awareness, and 10 seconds of attention, once, might work best for consideration and purchase intent.

The Lumen verdict: 

Follett says: “While a standard definition of attention and how to measure it would be helpful, it’s important to recognise that there is nothing standard about how attention works.

Every brand and campaign requires a different pattern of attention. The key question we should be asking is: how much attention is enough?”

Advertising impact is a delicate blend of media and creative factors. But which is more important when it comes to attention?

For:

Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, Founder and CEO of Amplified Intelligence, talks compellingly about attention elasticity. Every media placement has a floor and a ceiling of potential attention – you can’t fit a TV ads-worth of attention into a Facebook in-feed ad. As a result, media is queen bee when it comes to driving attention, she argues. 

Against:

While there are definitely upper and lower limits to the attention that can be achieved by different media, Lumen argues that the efficiency of that attention in building memory can be radically altered by creative. One of the biggest insights from Dentsu’s ongoing ‘Attention Economy’ project has been the differences in ‘effective attention’ driven by creative.  

The study was recently extended to Japan, and complemented by an in-depth analysis of the impact creative has on attention and memory, conducted by ad testing firm Realeyes. Strong creative boosted attention somewhat, but memory formation a great deal, suggesting that good creative can make attention work more efficiently.  

The Lumen verdict:   

“Media obviously matters: you can’t fit a quart’s-worth of attention into a pint-sized ad,” says Follett. “But good creative can earn brands an unfair share of attention – and make that attention work ‘harder’.”

Seeing is believing, so the visual elements of advertising must be the most important when it comes to grabbing and maintaining attention, right?   

For:   

Humans are very visual animals. The visual cortex makes up over 50% of the brain’s surface area. If we are blinded in an accident, compensation is typically three times more than if we lose our hearing. 

So, perhaps it is no surprise that visual media accounts for around 95% of advertising investment, and that much of the attention debate to date has focused on visual channels like TV, magazines, and social media. 

Against:   

Research from Lumen shows that audio-only media such as radio and (especially) podcasts command very high levels of attention (higher even than TV) which converts into memory extremely efficiently. In fact, audio generates +8% greater average brand recall versus Dentsu norms (38%). It’s also a highly cost-effective channel for attention; AM/FM radio has an attention CPM of just 40 cents. 

According to Lumen Research, the data – published by Westwood One – reframes the way in which we should think about the power of audio-only advertising.

The Lumen verdict: 

“We have ears as well as eyes. And sometimes, the best time to talk to people is when they are looking elsewhere,” says Follett.

The job of advertising is always to get noticed. But does it matter how long it gets noticed for? According to some, not so much.

For:   

No lesser luminary than Professor Byron Sharp of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute has questioned the value of measuring attentive time as a driver of business outcomes. Speaking in Australia in 2022, he said: “Our job is to get some attention. I don’t want to do advertising and not be seen. But after that, paying for a lot more [attention]? No.” 

Against: 

There is some compelling evidence about the impact attentive time has on outcomes. In the Havas, Dentsu and PwC studies referenced within this report, the ads and campaigns that generated the most attention almost always generated the most awareness, preference and clicks.  

But the most persuasive evidence comes from recent research by Ebiquity, which matches the profit contribution of different media to the volume of attention each generates.  According to the study, the correlation between attention and media stands at 0.979. This means that roughly 98% of profit change can be explained by changes in attentive time. The conclusion, then, is that attentive time predicts profit.

The Lumen view: 

Rebutting the critics, Follett says: “Professor Sharp is famously empirical rather than ideological: when the evidence changes, so too does he change his mind. Given the weight of evidence in favour of attention time mattering a great deal in driving the efficacy of advertising, perhaps he will agree with Mark Ritson that it is time for marketers to pay attention to attention?”

Those were five of the hottest attention arguments raging in adland today. And to be clear, this level of debate is good news. It shows how far we’ve come in understanding attention’s role in advertising – the more we scrutinise it, the closer we get to unlocking its full potential.

From redefining viewability to calls for standardisation, these arguments prove attention is no longer niche. Whether you agree or disagree with Lumen’s opinions, one thing should be clear to everyone: attention is here to stay. These conversations will shape its future, and the smartest advertisers and agencies are taking note.