WARC’s Cathy Taylor talks with Havas’ Jon Waite and Lumen’s Mike Follett about new attention research that details the power of aggregate attention in delivering results.

• The research, which concentrated on display advertising and was performed in partnership with Brand Metrics, looked at 9,000 brand uplift studies, and 11 years of eye-tracking data, providing scale to the understanding of how attention works. 
• Among other findings, the research showed that aggregate attention time, on a user-by-user basis, should be a key unit of analysis – brands should start looking beyond attention per impression to what the attention value is when individual consumers  see a burst of impressions. 
• It also demonstrated how attention needs differ depending on the outcomes a brand is looking for; upper-funnel metrics like awareness can benefit from multiple hits of small attention, but for campaigns more focused on driving sales, slightly higher average attention with slightly less frequency may be a better approach. 

For more insights into attention, check out the new WARC Guide to Attention.

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