It is a truism that people need to see your media for it to work. Equally true—and just as well rehearsed—is the idea that attention is scarcer and spread more thinly than ever before.
Over the last eight years, we have led the industry in measuring attention properly, understanding its impact, and building that understanding into how we plan and activate media. Eye‑tracking has been central to this. It allows us to see not just whether media is technically viewable, but how long it is actually seen or heard under real‑world conditions. That distinction matters. A great deal.
This work has allowed us to plan against something more meaningful than impressions or opportunities to see: attentive seconds. Seconds that are not merely available, but genuinely consumed.
But that turns out to be only the beginning of the story.
Not all attention is created equal
Not all impressions deliver the same proportion of attentive seconds. But it is also true that not all attentive seconds are the same as each other.
Some attention is high‑involvement, deliberate and emotionally charged. Some is passive, fleeting, and emotionally neutral. An attentive second hurriedly scrolled past on a phone is not the same thing as an attentive second nested within a 30‑second BVOD ad on a large screen. Treating them as equivalent is analytically convenient, but strategically misleading.
Our more recent work has focused on this distinction—on the quality of attention, not just its quantity. So we can understand the impressions that matter the most.
For example, our recent Brand Reset study showed that attention in digital video (not just traditional AV) delivers multi‑year sales effects through brand building – but this is not true of many other formats. It also showed that, second for second, voluntary attention—where people choose to engage—works harder than attention that is effectively coerced.
This is not a marginal nuance. It goes to the heart of how different channels create value.
Why context matters
Further insight came from the recent Attention study from Newsworks, Lumen and Peter Field—the subject of a dentsu roundtable earlier last month.
Newsbrands media outperforms other digital channels on attention, delivering around 30% more attention than the wider web. And whilst Newsbrands media often cost more on a CPM basis, when you shift the unit of value—from impressions to attentive seconds—the picture changes. Buying seconds that are actually viewed costs less. The result is approximately 11% greater value for money, a finding that aligns with our broader evidence on the cost‑effectiveness of high‑attention media.
Crucially, this higher attention translates directly into business outcomes. Campaigns with higher‑than‑average investment in Newsbrands delivered a 23% uplift in business results and a 20% increase in brand strength.
The mechanisms here are not mysterious.
Newsbrands operate in trusted editorial environments where audiences behave differently. News consumption is more deliberate. People read and scroll more slowly. Ads stay in view longer and are more likely to be genuinely seen. Lower clutter amplifies this effect: when fewer ads compete at the same time, each execution benefits disproportionately, rather than having its impact diluted.
This is not nostalgia for “quality environments”. It is observable behaviour.
Designing for reality, not aspiration
Even so, there is an important constraint that we should not ignore. Higher attention is a relative term.
Most digital ads still receive only around two seconds of active attention. More than two seconds in the case of Newsbrands, less than two seconds for non-newsbrands. But still smaller than many presume.
That is the reality.
The implication is uncomfortable but unavoidable: success in digital media depends on designing for the attention you have, not what you would like it to be.
This places an uncompromising demand on creative. Messages must land quickly; ideas must be legible almost instantly. Use native approaches to maximise your chance of extending attention above the average.
This makes the integration of media and creative non‑negotiable. Media choices determine the quantity and quality of attention available. Creative must be engineered to match it—shaping pacing, format and content to the context in which it appears. For example, with Hilton, we deploy native creator-led content, tailored to both social and YouTube, and see significantly increased levels of attention in each case.
When these two disciplines are aligned, even relatively brief exposures can create meaningful cognitive impact—and, ultimately, deliver business results. When they are not, no amount of reach will compensate.
Get in touch if you'd like to talk to a member of our team about attention planning.
