AdMonsters Playbook: Understanding Attention Metrics
For years and years we’ve been told that if the click isn’t on its deathbed, it should be shivved to death immediately. While early display ads in the mid-90s could boast CTRs above 40%, the likely number you’ll see attached to a campaign these days is below 0.1%. But for some reason, even in 2015, click-through rate remains as vital to digital ad measurement although its importance is widely ridiculed.
Reliance on the click means delivering unfathomable amounts of ad impressions to users, which has hyper-inflated the value of the pageview. This has led to a broken advertising system that rewards quantity over quality. Instead of building audiences, digital publishers are chasing traffic, trying to lure users to sites via clickbait headlines where the user is assaulted with an array of intrusive ad units. The end effect is overwhelming, ineffective ads adjacent to increasingly shoddy content.
However, the rise of digital video and viewability have injected linear TV measurement capabilities into the digital space. By including time in its calculation, viewability has opened a conversation into the value of user attention. It has introduced metrics with the potential to assist premium publishers in building attractive audiences; better quantify exposure for advertisers; and ultimately financially reward publishers with more engaged audiences.
This is a new and fast developing area, but one where a little education can go a long way. In addition to describing current attention metrics, AdMonsters’ latest playbook, Understanding Attention Metrics (sponsored by Chartbeat) will dive into what you should look for in an advanced metrics partner and how to use these metrics in selling inventory and optimizing campaign performance. We’ll discuss working with editorial to improve site experience in general and touch on how to transact based on attention and active time in-view.
Once the impression served as the chief proxy for exposure, to be replaced by the click as a proxy for engagement. Now time-based metrics have the potential to play proxy for arguably the most valuable commodity in digital advertising: attention.
There’s no time to waste!