Getting an unfair share of attention data in a mobile world

Attention to advertising is limited, rare, and valuable – especially on mobile. Ads on mobile phones are harder to miss (78% of them get noticed, compared to only 17% for standard desktop ads), but they often get less attention than their desktop alternatives (1.0 seconds on average, compared to 1.5 for desktop).

What can you really say in a second? Not much.

So, what is a savvy marker to do? One answer is to radically simplify your creative so that it works in a second – a focus on distinctiveness rather than differentiation, you might say.

But another answer might be to buy media that generates sufficient time for you to deliver a message. Not all ads are created equal, after all. Some ads get more attention than others, even on mobile. You just have to know where to look.

We conducted a test using our new webcam eye tracking software to understand the relative impact of Inskin mobile formats vs normal mobile formats.

What we saw was that some formats are just easier to see and get seen for longer. As we said above, 79% of mobile ads get noticed, for about a second each. With Inskin mobile formats, 96% of people who could see the ad do actually look at it and dwell time on the ads is typically 4.0 seconds – more than enough time for you to get a brand message across.

If you’re a really savvy marketer, you can create a composite metric that combines the viewability rate (i.e. if the ads could be seen at all), the likelihood to see the ad if viewable and the dwell time with the ads to create ‘aggregate seconds per 1000 impressions’. This allows to you to calculate how much attention you get from 1000 normal mobile ads, given reality of viewability vs 1000 Inskin ads (which are only sold an 100% viewable basis).

When you do this, you can see the true value of buying decent media:

• Normal mobile ads: 1000 ads x 0.55 (av. viewability) x 0.79 (av. likelihood to see) x 1.0 sec (dwell time with ad) = 434.5 sec of attention

• Inskin mobile ads: 1000 ads x 1 (Inskin viewability = 100%) x 0.96 (av. likelihood to see) x 4.0 sec (dwell time with ad) = 3,840 sec of attention

Put another way, a thousand standard mobile ads will get you about 7 minutes of attention; a thousand Inskin mobile ads will get you 64 min of attention. You do the math.

You can find out more about the research here. Or, if you prefer it in German (and let’s face it, who doesn’t prefer it in German?) have a look at this.

And if you want to see how you can get an unfair share of attention, you can get in touch here.