Adelaide

Advertisers’ attempts to engage consumers could end up leaving them cold. After all, not all attention is created equal.

Attention metrics are fast becoming a priority for advertisers, especially as a cookieless world looms large. But the technology requires more standardization before it can reach its full potential.

After years of courting lower-funnel performance budgets – and charging on a cost-per-click basis – Outbrain foresees further growth in attracting upper-funnel spend. It’s doing so by giving brands a way to measure their return on investment in awareness campaigns by tracking whether people are actually paying attention to their ads.

Is there a correlation between high attention scores, low emissions scores and business outcomes? To find out, Mars and Nestle-owned Nespresso are testing two new private marketplace (PMP)-based products developed by attention metrics provider Adelaide.

We’re close to the onset of true cross-media measurement – with the understanding that all video impressions are not created equal. That seems obvious, but one key player in the ecosystem, YouTube, disagrees.

The SSP Sharethrough partnered with attention metrics provider Adelaide to curate ad inventory packages based on attention.

Advertisers are starting to gravitate toward attention as a way to measure a campaign’s impact on the lower funnel, including conversion rate. Luxury car manufacturer Audi recently experimented with using attention metrics to algorithmically adjust programmatic bidding on ad inventory based on the amount of attention those ad placements are likely to draw. Audi then measured the impact high-attention placements had on post-click conversions.

Rather than looking at one particular data signal, attention metrics include a variety of data points, which are fed into a machine-learning model to predict the likelihood that a given media environment and ad creative will draw attention from a hypothetical audience member.

Former Fox executive Joe Marchese’s early-stage investment fund, Human Ventures, is paying attention to attention with a $7 million seed investment in Adelaide, a startup that helps advertisers measure and evaluate media based on attention rather than proxy metrics like viewability or video completion rate.

Mobile ad exchange Kargo has acquired attention sales platform Parsec Media. The deal reflects Kargo’s investment in attention as a viable metric for post-cookie mobile advertising, said Kargo CEO Harry Kargman.