High-attention media platforms can boost the attention of strong creative campaigns by up to 75 per cent, according to a new study.
Using human eye-tracking technology, a first for the marketing industry, the study analysed ads from 39 case studies in the Advertising Council of Australia’s Effectiveness Database.
It measured active and passive levels of attention gained by award-winning campaigns to determine the relationships between creative strength, attention, media choice, and marketing budget.
In addition to the importance of high-attention media platforms boosting creative effectivess, the report also found that the business impact of marketing campaign investment increased by 65 per cent when strong creative was placed on high-attention media.
Campaigns rated as ‘highly effective’ at driving business returns in the ACA’s database drew 60 per cent more active attention than lower-rated campaigns.
Even compared to other highly effective campaigns, those with particularly strong creative held attention three times as long.
“Amplified Intelligence’s attention-tracking data is best known for powerfully demonstrating that brand advertising is better served on platforms that support stronger advertising attention. This data now proves that poor platform choice can dramatically undermine the potential of great advertising,” said report co-author Peter Field.
“For marketers, the winning formula is to develop high-attention creative and to serve it on high-attention platforms, engaging with attention metrics and using them to guide creative and media choices. The biggest winner will be effectiveness.”
Co-author Rob Brittain added: “Higher-attention media platforms may come at a cost, but given their greater effectiveness, you get what you pay for and then some.
“It is a false economy to spend a more limited budget on lower-attention media channels just because they are cheaper. In fact, the evidence suggests they are not cheap enough,” he said.
Professor Karen Nelson-Field said that the new study validated attention as a key growth driver and that marketers should plan for attention instead of reach.
“Reach assumes that 100 per cent of the impressions you plan and buy are watched by 100 per cent of the audience for 100 per cent of the time, which is not the case.
“My advice to media planners and creative directors is to understand the boundaries that each platform and format will afford you and optimise your creative objectives and reach planning around that.
“This approach, without any doubt, will increase the certainty of return on investment, as clearly defined in this analysis.”