How much attention do consumers pay to inline visual ads? Not that much, suggest the results of a just-released study from Omnicom Media Group in conjunction with Yahoo and Amplified Intelligence. The research conducted across Yahoo’s digital properties showed that 53% of all ad formats studied, while meeting viewability standards, generated less than one second of active attention.
Other findings, as reported by MediaPost, showed the larger an ad's size, the more attention it received, and that 15-second video ads delivered 2.8 times more active attention than 30-second ads. Also notable, the older the audience, the more attentive: participants age 55+ gave 12 seconds of passive and 2.1 seconds of active attention to visual ads, while 18-24s had 7.6 seconds of passive and 1.3 seconds of active attention. The study suggests that advertisers should aim for getting at least 2.5 seconds of active attention.
The study makes the distinction between an ad's viewability and the attention paid, where the former is device-driven -- determined by how and where the ad gets loaded on the screen -- while the latter is human-driven, by how the viewer responds to the ad served on the screen.
OMG's research, conducted in the U.S., Canada, the UK and Australia, used Amplified Intelligence's technology, collecting data using facial footage from phone cameras and metadata on viewability, scroll patterns, sound and phone orientation. Responses to 128,000 mobile web advertisements were categorized into three levels of attention such as active, eyes on the ad; passive, eyes on screen, not on ad; and non-eyes, eyes not on screen or ad.
Referring to the study's findings, Amplified Intelligence founder and CEO Karen Nelson-Field calls the science of getting consumer attention a "highly nuanced metric that enables more effective creative, planning and buying strategies, and decisions.”