Active attention for longer: Out of home study goes global as MRC moves on attention metrics, signalling programmatic surge, challenger brand boost

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A decade after launching viewability metrics, the Media Ratings Council is moving to standardise attention metrics globally. That means buying media based on attention metrics will scale faster. But a world first out of home study into attention by QMS and Amplified Intelligence is already going global – and the findings for brands are huge. In short, out of home completely flips ratios around average active attention rates, with 85 per cent of sites studied getting at least 2.5 seconds – the baseline for memory encoding that grows brands. Some sites and formats get much more, and the rate of attention decay is slower than other media.

The results have the likes of Suncorp and OMD media executives pumped, suggests QMS Chief Strategy Officer Christian Zavecz. He thinks all out of home players will benefit as a result, especially those ramping up programmatic trading of assets. That’s because the study, which mapped 1.3 million people passing large and small format outdoor ads, also finds that active attention (people looking directly at the ad) and passive attention (where the ad is in people’s peripheral vision) can be predicted by site, which means planners and buyers can reliably trade on it.

Amplified Intelligence CEO, Dr Karen Nelson-Field, says the study will likely lead challenger brands to rethink out of home, because greater active attention does heavier lifting in terms of brand building, where smaller brands are traditionally disadvantaged by larger rivals whose codes and distinctive assets are already embedded in people’s brains.

Bus shelters, per the study, are a particularly good bet, notching “about 7.4 seconds of active attention and about 14 seconds of passive,” per Nelson-Field.

But getting the attention is only the first critical step. To drive sales, the creative and branding must cut through. “Anyone that tells you that attention and outcomes are linearly related is lying,” says Nelson-Field. “It’s the combination of the two: Media drives the opportunity for creative; creative takes it and gets the sale.”

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