Re-evaluating the effectivity of advertisements with attention as the new currency A multi-method and cross-media approach researching (the concept of) attention for advertisements

Currently media buying is done based on the likelihood a medium will reach the target audience. However, there may be a big discrepancy between reaching an audience and actually catching that audience’s attention. In the contemporary attention economy, advertisers are constantly competing for a little attention. There are several factors that influence whether someone has attention for advertisements, some of them are triggered by the media on which the advertisement is shown. Since all media have different characteristics, there are differences in the medium’s ability to foster for higher attention levels. Media companies see the urgency to re-evaluate advertisements’ effectiveness for different media based on attention. In order to do so, research methods that can measure actual and natural attention must be operationalised. This thesis uses a multi-method and cross-media approach to contribute to understanding how attention can be operationalised, to research consumers’ attention for advertisements and to answer the following research question: What is the level of attention of consumers for advertisements within different media in the current attention economy?. Since it is needed to first thoroughly understand the definition and works of attention in order to create a research method that can measure actual and natural attention, first expert interviews were conducted. These provided a clear understanding of how attention should be defined and how it works in attracting consumers’ attention (for different media). Moreover, the experts gave insides on how attention should be measured and if media buyers in the Netherlands already include their knowledge on attention when buying media. Subsequently, a secondary analysis was done in order to see if the perceptions of the experts could also be found in a data set of a research that measured consumers’ attention in a valid way. These two methods together made it possible to answer the main research question: the attention for online advertisements is the lowest, followed by the attention to television ads, moreover the experts perceive advertisements on print media, VOD and radio to receive most consumer attention. Media buyers often buy online media because they are cheaper, however based on the results of both parts of the study advertisers should indeed consider re-evaluating their media mix to ensure they optimize the combination of media for their brand. Based on this thesis, advised is to conduct a multi-method cross-media research, measuring attention in a direct way and to collect data on natural viewing behaviour in the consumers natural environment seeing advertisements in their natural media surroundings. When doing cross-media research an attention metric can be created. Media experts mentioned that media buyers are not already selecting media based on attention but would like to use an attention metric to be able to incorporate attention in the media choice, since they see the great importance of attention in advertising effectivity.