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Agency holding companies, marketers, ad-tech and trade organizations are all turning their gaze to attention tracking: which partners do it, how they do it and how they can get more stakeholders to, well, pay attention to it.
It’s a relatively new concept, with inconsistent methodologies. And while innovation has always propelled the $600 billion industry forward, without standardization and oversight, marketers are once again staring down the potential for ad fraud, which has plagued digital advertising since its inception.
“It is 100% necessary for the market to have a shared understanding,” said Marc Guldimann, founder and CEO of media measurement firm Adelaide. “What the ARF [Advertising Research Federation] is doing is incredibly important work to increase transparency around how people are measuring attention.”
What the ARF is doing, specifically, is rolling out the Attention Measurement Validation Initiative. The first of its three phases, surveying companies in the attention-tracking space and fielding one-on-one interviews, is nearly complete.
Scott McDonald, president and CEO of the ARF, who is not affiliated with any single agency or firm, unveiled the initial findings in June at the ARF’s Attention 2023 event. He’s now working on what he calls an “Attention Atlas,” which will illuminate vendor positioning, methods and deliverables so that marketers can make more informed choices when considering new partnerships.
With attention metrics, it’s really important we don’t allow for that gaming.
Marc Guldimann, CEO, Adelaide
“The reason for this higher degree of industry energy around attention measurement is partly because of the loss of behavioral signals,” McDonald said at the June event, referring to Google’s cookie deprecation, Apple’s privacy changes and new laws on the books—all of which have upended how consumers interact with digital advertisers.
The industry needs answers—and objectivity
Research on attention-tracking firms has so far been scant, but it’s building as some organizations scrutinize the ecosystem.
The Attention Council, a trade organization made up of agency leaders and attention-tracking firm executives that aims to advance the tracking space, fielded a survey of ARF members and produced a few additional reports summing up attention’s value to the industry. It continues to hold events on the subject, one of which this reporter participated in.
