The impact of the attention economy on marketers
Marketers often assume that consumers will watch all of their 10 second ad on YouTube or stick around for the entirety of their Instagram carousel. The reality, however, is that you’re likely to be getting far less of your audience’s attention than you might like.
We’ve all heard that it takes 7 seconds to begin forming an impression. Well, one study conducted by Mars neuroscientists found that marketers actually get about 2 seconds to start making an impression with audiences online. While there is, of course, no way of determining for certain just how long consumers are spending looking at your ad in particular, one thing is for sure: it’s probably much less time than you think – and that has some serious implications for your marketing campaigns.
The attention economy
Attention is finite. It might be focused on a single task, or distributed across multiple ones, but it’s ultimately a zero-sum game. And modern media understands this. We’re surrounded by media that is always trying to get more of our eyeballs on it more often, which in turn is further facilitated by on-demand services and the normalisation of multi-screen behaviour.
The result is that while content becomes more abundant in a bid to grab the interest of the consumer, attention becomes an increasingly scarce commodity.
To make matters even trickier for marketers, this scarcity of attention is often paired with a low commitment culture towards content consumption, where impressions and views don’t necessarily translate into consumer engagement.
Overcoming low commitment
A huge proportion of marketing materials, whether it’s content, ads or social media posts, are designed with the aim of getting as many eyes on them as possible. This, of course, isn’t a bad thing, but if a medium achieves a very low commitment, and hence low attention, gaining any true or lasting brand traction is always going to be a struggle.
So, while views and ad impressions are great, businesses and marketers need to look beyond those numbers and instead become coldly results-oriented when looking at how those views are translating into concrete outcomes. If your ad is gaining impressions, but those impressions are not turning into qualified leads and sales, it’s all for nothing.
Logic vs. emotion
Perhaps one of the most powerful ways marketers and brand can overcome the challenges of low attention and commitment is through understanding the role emotion plays in consumer decision-making.
One of the most awarded marketing campaigns in recent years is Cadbury’s campaign centred around the concept of generosity. While the concept is indirectly connected to the product, it works to engage audiences by relaying instantly relatable situations that linger in the mind long after the advert has been seen. These ads don’t bother telling us how great or delicious Cadbury chocolate is, they tell us stories.
Storytelling in this way bypasses the logical aspects of our brains, tapping straight into our emotions. When attention is at a premium, the ability to evoke emotion in an audience is key to not only triggering a fast response, but also getting that response to stick. With the average ad getting mere seconds to create a lasting impression, leveraging an emotional response may buy you the extra time you need to sustain attention and impart enough information to make that all-important sale.
Final thoughts
With audience attention increasingly divided across multiple screens or focused on other things besides being sold to, perhaps the biggest sin your ads can commit is being boring.
Your marketing efforts need to overcome the huge hurdle of being ignored, dismissed, or scrolled past unnoticed before you can even begin carving out consideration with your prospect. With so little time to achieve this, it’s essential that you test your ads with external audiences in the most natural setting possible to ensure they’re cutting through the noise of daily life and grabbing both consumer attention and commitment.
