Why Publishers and Advertisers are Moving to Attention Based Metrics

Why Publishers and Advertisers are Moving to Attention Based Metrics

Brands, frustrated by traditional digital advertising metrics like cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-thousand (CPM), are turning to attention-based metrics to improve their marketing return on investment.¹

Part of the reason for this shift is that in the traditional CPM model, impressions are valued equally, meaning a two-second ad impression is valued the same as a 15-second ad impression.² However, in reality, a longer ad impression time is more effective in both capturing user attention and increasing brand awareness.³

Jon Hook, vice president EMEA of brands and agencies at AdColony, spoke to this point: “(A) completed view doesn’t tell you too much, how many people are paying attention for a second, two seconds? That is the big opportunity moving forward – moving into an attention economy.”⁴

In other words, brands are more interested in knowing how much attention their ads are getting – not the number of impressions.

Here’s how two major publishers, the Financial Times and The Economist, are implementing attention-based metrics to address advertisers’ concerns, as well as some challenges preventing the mass adoption of attention-based metrics.

The Financial Times
The Financial Times invented an innovative cost-per-hour (CPH) metric that only places value on impressions that last five seconds or longer. The publisher sells CPH campaigns to clients interested in seeing a greater brand impact from each advertising dollar spent.⁵

David Buttle, global marketing director for commercial at the Financial Times, explains the philosophy behind the CPH model.

“Under traditional CPM buys, all impressions are valued equally, however our research shows that some impressions are delivering far more in terms of outcomes for campaigns. CPH attaches the value to those impressions which are delivering these outcomes,” he said.⁶

Learn three other strategies publishers are using to deliver profit while keeping their sites user-friendly and welcoming.

Buttle continued: “As such, CPH closes the gap between what publishers have traditionally sold – impressions – and what advertisers really want to buy: the attention of their target audience and consequently, marketing outcomes.”⁷

The Economist
The Economist has taken a similar approach to attention-based metrics, albeit with a few key differences.

Like the Financial Times, The Economist tracks and assigns value to ad impressions longer than five seconds. However, unlike the Financial Times, The Economist sells impressions based on five seconds of “active view time.” The publisher defines “active view time” as when an ad is in view and the user is “typing or scrolling up and down the page.” The idea is to only sell impressions based on when a user is actively engaged on a webpage.⁸

Impression measurement is capped at thirty seconds of active view time to protect advertisers from paying for ads with diminishing returns on brand uplift over time.⁹

Ashwin Sridhar, The Economist’s global head of revenue for the publisher’s digital products, explained, “We don’t think there is any merit on the ad being on the screen beyond 30 seconds if the user hasn’t taken action.”¹⁰

The publisher’s strategy seems to be working, at least in the case of one jewelry brand that bought an attention-based ad campaign on The Economist’s website.

Nielsen studied the results of the campaign and found that 39 percent of users polled “said they recognized the brand after the campaign, versus 28 percent in the control group.”¹¹

Challenges to the Attention-based Metrics Model
While attention-based metrics have a strong appeal to advertisers, adoption rates have been slow for a variety of reasons.¹²

First, it’s difficult to pin down a standard for what denotes a “view.” For example, Facebook considers a ‘view’ to be three seconds, while YouTube considers it to be 30 seconds.¹³

Second, it’s difficult to adjust a standard for attention-based metrics to different ad sizes and formats. For example, if an ad has many words, then the effective view time metric would need to be different than an ad with, say, two or three words.

Keith Grossman, global chief revenue officer of Bloomberg Media explained, “The question is, what is the proper amount of time to measure success and engagement? If we agree on two minutes but then I give you a 200-word piece that takes two minutes to read, that’s not successful.”¹⁴

“You can’t standardize against a 200-word article, because it takes less time to read 200 words on a site where you skim than on a more complex site,” he said. “The industry needs category indices and some sort of standardization for word-per-minute so that we can understand how people are engaging on text.”¹⁵

While it’s clear that attention-based metrics offer considerable value to advertisers, pinning down industry standards may remain a stumbling block moving forward. Still, the push towards attention-based metrics by premium publishers like the Financial Times and The Economist is indeed progress for the industry.

1. Goodfellow, Jessica. “Why Brand Advertisers Are Shifting to Attention-Based Metrics.” The Drum, 14 Nov. 2017.
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5. Feeley, Michael. “Financial Times Calls for Wider Uptake of ‘Attention-Based’ Ad Metrics among Digital Marketers.” The Drum, 24 Oct. 2017.
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8. Joseph, Seb. “The Economist Thinks Attention Metrics Are the Future but Other Media Players Aren’t Convinced Time-Based Buying Is the Way to Get There.” The Drum, 8 Nov. 2015.
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11. Davies, Jessica. “The Economist Is Aiming to Run 20 Time-Based Ad Campaigns by End of 2016.” Digiday, 4 Feb. 2016.
12. Goodfellow, Jessica. “Why Brand Advertisers Are Shifting to Attention-Based Metrics.” The Drum, 14 Nov. 2017.
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14. “Attention Metrics: Bloomberg Media Sells Digital Ads Based on Audience Engagement.” EMarketer, 7 Oct. 2016.
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