Connected TV (CTV) has emerged as one of the fastest growing advertising opportunities - more time is spent watching CTV than linear and nearly all streaming TV is available within ad supported environments, including Netflix and Disney. As streaming has exploded in popularity, attention metrics have simultaneously emerged as one of the most effective ways to measure, value and improve the impact of CTV inventory.
And with good reason. We all know that ads only work if people are paying attention. And, what’s more, we also know that attention is extremely hard to capture from today’s distracted consumers. According to TVision’s most recent State of CTV, the average TV ad captures 34% attention. In the course of a typical 30 second ad, advertisers will have the attention of CTV viewers for just over 15 seconds. With attention so difficult to capture, it’s worth noting that CTV and TV in general deliver more attention than other forms of advertising, including digital.
Every additional step advertisers can take to improve attention translates to additional value and improved business outcomes. For example, in a recent study that our team at TVision conducted with Upwave, we found that for every percentage point increase in attention, there is similar lift in brand KPIs, including Aided Awareness.
Real world implementations are proving the value of optimizing for attention within CTV advertising. Origin, a creative technology company that among other proprietary ad formats offers advertisers a zero-code Native CTV ad format, Slingshot, which is designed specifically to maximize viewer attention, recently delivered a CTV ad campaign for VISIT FLORIDA. For this campaign, Slingshot was used to create contextually-aligned, data-fed 15 second native “Ad Toppers” that ran directly ahead of VISIT FLORIDA’s ads and drew the viewers’ attention to the screen by showing them up-to-date weather forecasts across Florida. We all intuitively know that context increases attention, and Origin proved this to be true with this campaign. Visit Florida achieved a 64% increase in attention, compared to the same ads that ran without the Native Ad Toppers. And the increase in attention delivered results further down the funnel.
- Origin and VISIT FLORIDA saw a 16.2% increase in ad recall, as compared to ads that were not optimized for attention.
- The companies also recorded a 2.25x lift in ad viewers who were considering a vacation to Florida.
- There was also a 73% increase in intent to seek more information about Florida, compared to viewers who saw the ad without the attention-increasing Ad Toppers.
When brands like VISIT FLORIDA optimize their campaigns for attention, every incremental improvement translates to significant efficiency gains and greater value from their ad investments.
In addition to Ad Toppers and clever creative elements from organizations like Origin, there are other ways to improve the overall value and impact of a CTV campaign investment. For example, apps and dayparts will deliver different levels of attention. Brands and advertisers can optimize their campaigns to overinvest in high performing dayparts and apps that deliver higher attention. In addition, premium, original content typically delivers higher overall attention than syndicated programming. TVision’s State of CTV includes a look at the average attentive seconds for some of the largest apps. dMVPDs, which most closely mirror the linear TV environment, deliver more seconds of attention on average.
Understanding how content and creative captures attention and identifying ways to measure and improve attention within CTV media plans and media valuations can help marketers uncover value and make smarter decisions with their CTV investments.
Yan is the CEO and Co-founder of TVision, the only company which measures how people really watch TV and CTV via a passive in home panel. TVision helps brands, their agencies, TV networks, and OTT platforms better understand how people really watch CTV so they can make more effective media decisions.
Yan founded TVision while earning his MBA at MIT. Prior to TVision, Yan started and managed Yo-ren, a leading digital marketing agency in China, and also worked at McKinsey in Tokyo. He has an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a Bachelor of Industrial Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. He is an in-demand speaker, having appeared on stage at numerous industry events including Advertising Week, TV of Tomorrow, TV Week, as well as IAB, ANA and ARF events. Yan grew up in both Japan and China and currently resides with his family in New York.
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