How attention and sustainability can help brands reduce their carbon footprint
The often-challenging task of measuring attention in advertising and being sustainable could actually work hand-in-hand writes Emilia Chambers, Carat’s head of digital, Victoria, following some new research by research from Playground XYZ.
Digital media, in the past, has been considered a greener advertising medium compared to the physical – “my digital ad won’t end up in landfill like a print one would” – and that is correct.
However, we didn’t consider one critical factor in that statement; digital media is powered by energy and this energy generates emissions at all stages of the process, from the creation of the ads, to the power needed to run the consumers computer which is being served the ad.
This isn’t new news for many of us, but what is new is our ability to better measure the impact our digital campaigns are having, as well as being able to break down the silos of sustainable media and efficient media.
A very interesting posting Emilia.
I totally agree that ‘attention’ is the missing metric in the advertising to sale chain.
Using OOH’s MOVE as an example of a ‘traditional’ measurement path, we have Opportunity To See (OTS) by passers-by, Probability To See (LTS), ‘attention’ to the billboard is missing, and ‘sales’ is the typical measurement of a campaign’s success.
So, who provides those measurement links? OMA’s MOVE is used by the vendor and the media agency to provide the most cost-effective campaign that delivers the best reach and frequency. As noted before ‘attention’ is the missing link, and the advertiser provides the sales aspect.
So, why is ‘attention’ missing? A key reason is that ‘attention’ is primarily driven by the quality of the creative. This is reinforced by work done by people like Peter Pynta at Neuro-Insight. One of the key findings is that there is no norm as to ‘attention’. The impact of ‘attention’ is highly dependent on the creative and each ads ‘attention’ can vary widely. That is not the responsibility of the media owner or the media agency. So who’s responsible? Apparently no-one wants to spend the money.
Further, the same thing happens for TV, radio, press, magazines, cinema, on-line etc. There is an opportunity for on-line ‘attention’ testing to be able to included at reasonable cost. And the irony is that as you include ‘attention metrics’ they will diminish the ‘attentive viewers’ metric which then drives up the CPM.