Attention 2023

Until recently, measures of ad attention relied mostly on retrospective recall or on verbalized reactions to ad creative. As such, measures of ad attention were rarely incorporated into campaign planning.

This is no longer the case. Advances in neuroscience, biometrics, eye tracking “in the wild,” and AI-fueled diagnostics of responses to digital media have kindled a growing interest in the use of attention metrics—both for creative development and media placement valuation. The market for such metrics continues to grow and new firms and services compete for a share of that growing market. However, there appears to be no common definition of “attention,” nor is there yet a widely shared industry understanding of how attention functions in advertising, of the measurable properties of attention, nor of the specific mechanisms by which attention influences consumer choices and opinions.

Join us on June 7 at Fordham University in New York City for a recap of the issues debated at our recent AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference, emerging work as well as an update on Phase I of the ARF Attention Validation Initiative, an empirically based evaluation of the rapidly developing market for attention measurement and prediction. Tour the ARF’s “map” of the attention measurement space and learn how companies are staking out positions on such subjects as:

• How close are inexpensive proxy signals to the more expensive data from direct human measurement?
• How accurate are positive/negative emotion measures connected to attention?
• How different are levels of attention when content goes to different devices/surfaces?