State of play, differences in techniques and privacy: Ben Dimond talks all things attention

With the ExchangeWireLIVE Attention Event just around the corner, we caught up with Playground xyz’s Global Head of Commercial Ben Dimond in this exclusive interview to hear how attention has evolved in recent years, his thoughts on different attention measurement techniques, and why he’s looking forward to this year's event. 

How has the attention challenge evolved over the past couple of years? What has made capturing people’s attention more difficult?

The industry is a few years into its journey on attention metrics and the space is heating up. Capturing people's attention is harder than ever - there’s relentless competition creating a growing “Attention Deficit” whereby there’s way more ads and content than there is time in the day to view it all. This paradigm underpins the notion of the Attention Economy and a change to treating attention for what it is - a precious resource.

Are some ad formats better able to capture consumers’ attention? In what ways do other formats struggle?

Research conducted by the Chicago School of Psychology shows that we’re exposed to about 6,000 ads a day, and data from Nielsen proves that an ad’s creative makes up 47% of its success. So, you can see both the obstacles every ad faces in attracting attention and the importance of strong creative. 

At a channel and format level there’s definitely winners and losers. Standard display faces a lot of challenges because there’s so much inventory, the ads are relatively static, not very engaging and homogenous. Custom formats and High Impact fare a lot better because they cut through the clutter.

Video content (whether it be on the web, social, YouTube or CTV) can deliver great attention, but the environment, targeting, and creative also play a huge role in shaping how much.

However, we can’t just look at the attention a given format receives as the end game. Understanding the impact of that attention and linking it back to a client's outcomes is key, and therefore so is the price paid for that attention. The goal is to find the sweet spot between attention, outcomes and cost.

What measurement techniques/metrics are currently used to evaluate how much attention ad campaigns are garnering, and how effective are they?

Various vendors offer a range of different attention measurement techniques and metrics but they really fall into two camps: Biometric Data and Proxy Metrics. 

Biometric data includes techniques like eye tracking in order to validate an ad was looked at. It provides a ‘ground truth’ in terms of being able to prove attention occurred. 

Proxy metrics refers to the use of signals that infer attention has occurred. These metrics are often derivatives (or mash ups) of things like Viewabilty, Time In View, Ad Clutter.

Most vendors tend to use one or the other of these. At Playground xyz, we use biometric, real-world, eye-tracking data from opt-in panels across the Display, OLV, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and more. We use this data to train AI predictive models that score attention in the real world. 

What developments are taking place to improve how attention is measured, and how will these comply with tightening privacy legislation?

We think that attention measurement needs to have real human data in the mix and we’re not alone in this position, but it does come with some important privacy considerations.

Anyone using Biometric data (or any personal data) has to be watertight on how they gather consent for the collection and use of that data, and this is likely to get even more important in the coming years.

We ourselves have a privacy-by-design approach to collecting and using this data: Informed consent from panellists, we don’t collect data we can’t justify the use of, we periodically discard PII. That kind of thing.

Outside of panels, we need to ensure that proxy metrics and predictive models cannot be reverse engineered into forming a view on an individual.

What are you looking forward to at the ExchangeWireLIVE Attention event?

I’m very much looking forward to mixing with delegates, seeing how brands, agencies, publishers and tech vendors are tackling attention, and generally taking stock of where we are as an industry!