DENTSU’s attention study showed that Teads’ InRead video ad generates more than 2x higher attention compared to video displayed on social media.
Research on the attention economy represents one of the most comprehensive perspectives on attention studies in the media industry.
Teads, the global media platform, collaborated with Dentsu International on the release of its latest attention economy research, showing that premium publishers drive higher engagement than social media. The results mark a major step forward for advertisers looking to use attention as a metric for media planning, buying, and measurement.
Attention data was collected from the mobile platform across approximately 3,005 users in the UK and the US across all Teads publishers. The research was conducted alongside a control group of 801 users to measure the impact of attention on brand outcomes. This controlled environment allowed Teads to specifically evaluate the power of creativity and format optimization in driving attention.
The study demonstrated that viewability alone is no longer a sufficient metric for measuring consumer response to content on a webpage. Some viewability factors, such as format size or page position, can actually negatively impact attention levels.
Advertisers and agencies have been searching for a better way to measure the attention economy. Dentsu’s latest study identified four key drivers:
View time. Visible time is intuitively one of the most important drivers of attention, which was confirmed by the study across video and display ads that benefit from quality visible time. Teads’ premium publishers drive high user engagement through quality content, resulting in slower scrolling speeds and an average of 12.2 seconds of view time (even higher than within video environments). This shows that advertisers achieve twice as much attention through ads on the Teads platform compared to social media.
User choice. Intrusive ads may gain more attention, but it is negative attention and can harm brand safety. When consumers voluntarily choose to watch an ad, it has a strong positive impact on brand metrics, regardless of whether they watched for 2 seconds or 20 seconds. Formats that naturally attract attention deliver better and faster results than intrusive formats.
Creativity. While the importance of creativity for ad effectiveness has long been documented, it was essential to measure its impact within the attention economy framework.
It turned out that engaging creative executions have the strongest impact on attention. The difference between good and poor creative execution can influence recall by up to 17%, while sound impacts recall by only around 6%.
The impact on attention recall remains at a “typical” 3.2 seconds of attention.
The study also showed that ads optimized for the Teads platform achieved a 49% increase in attention compared to the original ad. Teads’ interactive display formats, designed specifically for mobile devices, performed especially well in attracting and retaining attention, generating three times more attention than MPU formats.
Relevance. Finally, the Dentsu study, based on previous research, showed that placing ads in a context relevant to the reader increases attention time per 1,000 impressions by 13%.
Joanne Leong, Vice President, Global Media Partnerships at Dentsu International, said: “At Dentsu, we completed one of the largest eye-tracking studies to date and are deeply committed to exploring attention and applying it in practice to deliver better media solutions for our clients. As part of this project, we worked with some of the most forward-thinking media owners to understand how to increase effectiveness on their platforms. Teads was an excellent partner in developing this for their platform.”
Caroline Hugonenc, Vice President Global Research & Insights at Teads, added: “This fantastic Dentsu research should open our eyes to the steps we need to take to achieve higher-quality media while ensuring creativity and advertising effectiveness. At Teads, we understand that building an attention economy framework will help advertisers, their agencies, and media partners deliver better results and more engaging content for consumers. We are very proud to have been part of this groundbreaking study and look forward to further advancing our understanding.”
You can view the research findings here.