Attention, Attention… a new study for premium digital is here
Partner content
Mail Metro Media has partnered with Lumen to conduct a major online project called Centre for Attention measuring attention rates, brand recall and purchase intent. The publisher is also giving away a free advertising campaign to grab the attention of its millions of readers.
The attention narrative is growing momentum and across the industry, we are seeing positive stories of why we should all be focused on attention.
Attention technology company Lumen is an expert in the attention economy and its previous studies have shown that the larger the ad, the more attention it is likely to receive.
This finding has been followed by many supporting arguments around scroll speed or the positive effect of premium environments. We also know from many different sources that attention drives ad recall and encourages brand choice, but how does premium digital perform and why do so many online studies focus on standard display?
To address this question, Mail Metro Media partnered with Lumen to conduct a major online project called Centre for Attention measuring attention rates, brand recall and purchase intent for premium display, video, sponsored content and homepage takeovers across mobile and desktop on MailOnline.
Attention is more than just viewability, it’s getting closer to why the ad works…
It’s important to consider the power that attention holds as it measures the amount of time a user spends actually looking at an ad. There’s a big difference between an ad being in view, a common digital metric, and it actually being seen, remembered and promoting action.
Whilst we can make assumptions about attention through predictive models, it is going to become more important to use eye-tracking technology on premium creative to understand how an advert truly performs in its chosen media context.
Focusing on attention allows us first to start understanding the qualities of the placement that make it more likely to be seen, but secondly, through a deterministic test, we can also see what in the creative is attended to. This is one of the most important learnings from eye-tracking studies in that it can show us what people are looking at whether it is the call to action, the slogan or the visuals. With follow-up surveys we can also understand the sentiment to the advertising.
Premium matters for digital…
Centre for Attention explores why premium digital matters for attention and brand metrics, and for the first time, Mail Metro Media was able to assess all of its digital product suite across MailOnline.
In this study, nine premium formats and nine standard formats were tested by over 2,500 MailOnline readers. The respondents were not only providing deterministic eye tracked attention metrics, but they were also completing a follow-up questionnaire to assess recall, consideration, and purchase intent.
MailOnline was chosen as the perfect context as it is the UK’s most engaged newspaper brand online with readers spending over 70mins across the website and app per month, generating over 1.8 billion page views. Additionally, MailOnline offers bespoke and appealing creative formats that deliver scale, and now we can prove they deliver significant amounts of attention.
Premium digital formats, of course, generate higher attention rates compared to standard digital formats, but Centre for Attention uncovers exactly how much more attention each premium format achieves.
Premium digital not only leads to significant increases in attention but also significantly boosts brand recall. This improvement in brand memory results in shifts in both consideration and intent.
Aside from premium formats, we also found other factors that can improve performance, such as increasing the number of ad exposures of the same brand on the same page. This improves attention and brand metrics, as well as the fact that contextual targeting results in further uplifts.
Our top attention findings for premium formats…
Premium formats generate significantly more attention – delivering more than four times more attention than standard formats and over seven times more attention on desktop.
Attention on MailOnline premium formats can outperform other digital channel benchmarks – investing in the right inventory for the right objective can drive quality attention.
Significantly improve brand recall on desktop and mobile – prompted recall on premium formats is significantly higher, up to two times more!
Drive uplifts in consideration and purchase intent – the percentage of respondents that would likely consider the brand again in the future is improved when generating higher attention.
What is the Centre for Attention and why is it important?
Centre for Attention is Mail Metro Media’s latest flagship research project to be part of the wider attention economy. It helps demonstrate how MailOnline performs for brand advertising and enables advertisers to benchmark their creative performance in future campaigns.
That is why Mail Metro Media is soon offering creative attention ad effectiveness, using Lumen’s eye-tracking technology, to help clients understand how their ads perform and how to optimise the creative to be more appealing to consumers.
Using creative attention ad effectiveness with Mail Metro Media allows advertisers to test attention, assessing heat maps of the creative to ensure it is working harder for every impression. Additionally, it measures attention funnel metrics for formats, which can be compared against benchmarks for a clearer understanding of effectiveness.
Centre for Attention also has provided Mail Metro Media with the understanding to create attention media plans which will provide an estimated attention score for any campaign. Using this data and future studies will mean that the media owner is better able to recommend optimisations to drive increases in attention and brand metrics.
How you can get involved…
To celebrate the launch of its industry-leading new research, Mail Metro Media is giving away a free advertising campaign to grab the attention of its millions of readers.
To find out more about the Centre for Attention study and for the opportunity to win a multi-platform attention-grabbing advertising campaign with Mail Metro Media, click here.
To see the attention study in more detail, you can download the full report by clicking here or contact us directly.
Samantha Eales is insight manager at Mail Metro Media
