Attention has been one of the industry’s big talking points for a number of years now, as everybody strives for more accurate ways to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. The problem is not all channels are capable of driving the same amount of attention and, even then, does this attention lead to results?
“When we think about attention, we think about all the things you now face as a consumer. You’re bombarded by messages. And those messages distract you,” said Paul Wright, Head of International at Uber Advertising, speaking at Advertising Week Europe.
The desire not to add to this distraction meant Uber launched its advertising business with a desire to ensure that ads appeared natively within its apps. This has led to users spending up two minutes within these ads, but it needed to know what this really meant for brands, because “attention is wonderful but, if it doesn’t mean anything for your business, then why would you do anything about it,” according to Wright.
The ride-hailing and delivery platform engaged with eye-tracking technology company Lumen Research to look into what attention within its apps meant for brands.
Uber was found to drive 6.6 times more attentive seconds than most other online and mobile channels – only online video (OLV) non-skippable ads accrued slightly more. Meanwhile, average attentive view time within its apps sits at 5.5 seconds which is, once again, only bettered by OLV non-skippable ads.
Wright points to Uber’s ability to sustain attention longer than other channels as being down to people constantly engaging with the app once they’ve requested a ride or ordered a delivery – they want to know where the driver is and how long they’re going to take.
With this engagement, Lumen found that Uber’s ads achieve over 50% recall in just 2.5 seconds, while exposure across its apps drive a +27% uplift in consideration.
Wright, however, made it clear that these ads don’t have the same effectiveness, if they’re not made contextually relevant to the consumer.
“There’s no point in sticking ads up there if they don’t contextualise to the user experience,” he said. “We have a lot of data that can help shape the understanding of the consumer and then help the contextualisation to maximise the attention that you’re going to get.”
Wright shared a case study of a campaign Uber ran with L’Oréal. The campaign drove people to toward the airport duty free, rather than online, through a free gift at the point of sale. The Armani campaign managed to achieve 243 seconds average view time, 7.68% swipe rate, and 4.76% clickthrough rate.
A money driver
Driving attention is all well and good, but it means nothing if that engagement isn’t leading to the financial results that every business strives for.
Lumen explored this with Uber.
“The nature of advertising is about attention,” said Mike Follett, CEO at Lumen Research. “That’s the job that we have to do to get people to look at stuff, so that they remember it and, if they remember it, they might buy it.”
According to Follett, “attention almost exactly predicts profit.”
Uber’s ad business was found to drive a fair about of incremental profit, proving the link between attention and financial gain.
“A thousand Uber ads would generate around £29.37 in incremental profit,” said Follett. “Take into account how much you pay for the media and all the adtech fees and all the creative stuff and all that – every 1000 ads generate about 30 quid in incremental profit.”
*Uber Advertising is a client of Bluestripe Communications, owned by Bluestripe Group, publisher of NDA
