Dentsu UK&I Commits to Addressing Attention Challenge with Unlocking the New Currency of Attention

Dentsu UK&I today launched Unlocking the new currency of Attention – A UK perspective, the latest iteration of its multi-year Attention Economy research to redefine how advertising campaigns are planned, measured, and optimised for attention. 

The bespoke UK report in partnership with Lumen and TVision is the product of a large-scale, robust research study to test and quantify the relationship between Ad Attention and Brand Outcomes. The research establishes a firm link between Attention and brand outcomes suggesting that whilst existing device metrics such as ‘viewability’ have served a purpose they can no longer be viewed as a meaningful measure of exposure or effectiveness. 

Dentsu has already begun using their leading Attention Economy research to build pioneering products in the UK such as ‘Attention Algorithm’ and the new insights from this UK report will now be used to build attention metrics more broadly into dentsu’s cross-media planning tools.

Hamish Nicklin, CEO, Media, dentsu UK&I, said: “At dentsu we are serious about changing the way media is planned and bought for the better and we want to drive that evolution forward by offering tools powered by insight which deliver our clients meaningful outcomes at relevant value. This new research drives home the importance of the human experience of media and leaves us with no doubt that Attention is a more reliable predictor of outcomes for brands than existing measures of success.”

Key findings of the Unlocking the currency of Attention report include:

• MRC Viewability Guidelines do not fully represent real audience behaviour and sticking to them verbatim may not improve ROI for all advertisers.

• Different formats can deliver outcomes such as choice and recall at varying levels of attention – three seconds of eyes-on attention on one format is not the same experience for the user as three seconds on another. 

• Important variables highlighted by the report include whether views are forced vs. optional. the role that sound can play, creative fit and targeting. None of which is captured in any current media value system.

• The report suggests the combination of ‘Seconds of Attention per 000’ with learnings of how these seconds have the power to translate to outcomes for brands, combined with the unit price of media, creates a truly new value system for media planning and trading.


You can view the research in full here