News brands are trusted by millions of people; they get deliberate and focussed attention every day… but advertisers continue to underinvest. Why?
At today’s Media360 in Brighton, Newsworks’ insight director Heather Dansie took to the stage to reveal some key highlights from our upcoming study into attention.
Presenting alongside effectiveness expert Peter Field and Lumen Research’s co-founder and chief analytics officer David Bassett, Dansie explained the important link between attention and profit.
“We’ve known for some time the power of news brands to achieve high levels of attention,” Bassett followed. Lumen’s work on the study found ads on news brand sites get 40% more attention than other display.
He added: “Attention to advertising is always a byproduct of attention to content.”
Worryingly, said Bassett, the channels in decline when it comes to advertising investment are the ones with higher attention, despite the evidence showing that high attention delivers profit.
“It’s insanity,” agreed Field. “Budgets are going into social media, platforms that according to research by Dr Karen Nelson-Field are largely incapable of building brands and the all-important mental availability to drive long-term effectiveness.”
“Things have got to change; we’ve got to fix it and fix it fast,” he continued. “One of the best ways to do it — and still retain the agility and reach that everyone loves with digital — is to pull money out of lower attention platforms like social and put it into high-attention platforms like news brands”.
Newsworks’ ground-breaking study into the importance of attention for advertising effectiveness, in partnership with Lumen and Peter Field, will be released in September.
If you’d like to know more, get in touch.
