One of the main themes of the presentation was a critique of the current approach to campaign measurement. Malcolm Devoy, Global Chief Planning Officer at PHD, points out that the advertising industry has confused two fundamentally different concepts: effectiveness and efficiency.
As Les Binet and Sarah Carter point out, effectiveness means achieving a goal, such as brand growth or sales. Efficiency, on the other hand, describes how cheaply or quickly we achieve it. “Today, we are too obsessed with efficiency. We optimise campaigns based on metrics that are often unrelated to real-world impact,” he said.
According to him, the digital environment has brought with it an extreme ability to measure and optimise, but also a problem, as decision-making increasingly relies on metrics that are not linked to business outcomes. A typical example is CTR (click-through rate), which can even correlate negatively with the actual impact of a campaign.
A real waste? Advertising without attention
The campaign reach metric – i.e. the number of people who have at least theoretically seen the advert – is no longer sufficient. “Even if a campaign reaches a million people, if most of them don’t notice the advert, its effect is practically zero,” he said, referring to research by Karen Nelson-Field. She found that up to three-quarters of online adverts do not garner any real attention from viewers, even though they are technically displayed.
Malcolm emphasised that true “effective reach” is not the number of impressions, but the quality of attention the advert receives. Even mass media, which are not as targeted, often attract a higher level of attention than a carefully targeted online campaign. “Reach without attention is worthless,” he summarised.
In his view, campaign planning should be guided by audience attention, not merely the quantity of reach. This makes it easier to assess which channels and formats truly support long-term brand growth and short-term sales.
Whilst reach used to be relatively homogeneous in the past, today’s media landscape is fragmented. Different formats, durations and placements of adverts mean that not every reach has the same value. Data shows that as attention span increases, so do both the short-term effect on sales and the long-term impact on brand recall.
Short vs. long attention spans: different goals, different needs
An important finding is that there is no single universal level of attention. The required duration varies depending on the campaign’s objective.
- Short attention spans may suffice for activation and short-term sales,
- whilst longer exposure is necessary for brand building and memory formation.
Malcolm Devoy also distinguishes between active and passive attention. Whilst active attention (direct viewing) is important for conveying information, passive attention (peripheral perception) can effectively contribute to brand building.
He also highlighted the difference between campaign planning and optimisation. Attention is, in fact, a metric of effectiveness – a planning tool – and should not become the goal of optimisation itself; otherwise, there is a risk that the advert will ‘catch the eye’ but fail to build a relationship with the brand. ‘Once a metric becomes a goal, it ceases to be a good metric,’ he says.
If attention were to become an optimisation KPI, it would lead to a distortion of both creative and media planning. Advertisements might become more “flashy”, but less effective from a brand perspective.
Media selection has the greatest influence
Devoy joined the debate on the influence of creativity on attention by noting that the level of attention is not primarily determined by creativity, but by the medium. According to the data he presented, the greatest differences arise between individual channels, devices and formats.
For example:
- television and video formats generate significantly higher attention than display,
- large screens outperform mobile devices,
- longer formats have a significant impact on recall.
Conversely, the differences between markets, target groups or brands are relatively small.
A new approach: attention-adjusted reach
As a practical solution, he introduced the concept of ‘attention-adjusted reach’. This combines reach with the minimum level of attention required to achieve a specific objective. It is therefore not just a question of how many people the advert reached, but how many of them paid sufficient attention to it.
This approach enables better planning of the media mix, the allocation of channels to specific objectives, and the linking of media metrics with business results
Different communication objectives require different channels, formats and levels of attention — the deeper the objective (from activation to brand building), the more seconds of attention are required. The highest demands on attention are in brand building, where it is advisable to use long-form audio-visual formats, content marketing and experiential marketing, and where attention should exceed ten active or passive seconds.
Despite the emphasis on attention, Malcolm Devoy concluded his presentation quite unequivocally by stating that this is not a new ‘holy grail’. “Attention is a great indicator, but it is not the goal. That is always effectiveness,” he emphasised. Attention should therefore become part of campaign planning and evaluation, but never their sole objective. “Attention is a tool, not a goal,” he concluded.
Source: mediaguru.cz