A new study from Contxtful, a Canadian ad tech company, explores the concept of receptivity and validates attention as an important measurement of ad success.
Contextful defines receptivity as an effectiveness and efficiency metric used to qualify all contexts, content and campaign parameters based on attention. It conducted a global study to explore the concept and how it relates to openness to receiving messages and its role as a measurement of attention.
The study was carried out in September of this year. Over two billion ad impressions across Canada, the U.S. and Europe were analyzed with Omnicom Media Group, Kinesso, Cossette, Glassroom and Desjardins among the agencies and advertisers taking part. The research was done with multiple partners.
Contxtful’s receptivity technology was embedded in publisher pages and in ad creative. Each time one of these pages was open or one of the ads was shown, Contextful’s tech examined attentive micro-patterns, minute changes in how people interact with content. The signatures of attention include scrolling, scroll speed, clicking, mouse motion, and device motion. AI was used to detect these split-second markers of attention.
Alexandre Desilets-Benoit, founder and chief technology officer at Contxtful, explains that the receptivity tech uses motion sensors to detect device motion, but most other interactions are more classical on-screen interactions. The company doesn’t track the interactions, he says, it simply processes the data as it happens.
Contxtful also studied outcomes and KPIs for the campaigns in order to assess the impact of micro-patterns.
The research found that people are in an attentive state of mind on average less than 40 seconds at a time. And, naturally, a media spend is more efficient when ad impressions are bought within the attention window.
Desilets-Benoit says people’s attention while browsing the web appears and disappears very quickly. “It’s a very fluctuating state and the average time when people are really attentive is 30 seconds. The fact that someone can be attentive up to 30 seconds means you can slot in roughly 12 ad seconds. You try to capture 10 to 12 seconds of that attentive state by putting advertising in front of them when they are attentive.”
When people are attentive varies and the goal for advertisers is to make sure their ads are present when viewers are attentive. To allow advertisers to place ads in content when viewers are attentive, Contxtful’s team of data scientists developed an eponymous receptivity technology for the digital buying process. Receptivity enables advertisers to buy pre-qualified receptive impressions through publishers and allows publishers to monetize premium inventory by identifying the most attentive opportunities.
Desilets-Benoit says, “Agencies that prioritize buying only attentive moments witnessed amplified media results, often exceeding 20%. Publishers that filtered attentive ad calls for their direct and private marketplace (PMP) deals ensured that their premium ad placement reached those who are most likely to be receptive, significantly amplifying the efficacy of their direct and PMP deals.”
In explaining how the Receptivity technology works in the digital buying process, Desilets-Benoit says attention shows up as a targeting choice that asks a publisher to sell only content where viewers are currently attentive. “It doesn’t change how people interact because publishers are already creating segments and audiences. Now they can also create a filter based on attention and a buyer can ask the publisher to guarantee they can give the brand only attentive eyeballs, attentive opportunities.”
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