How to Get the Attention Economy to Really Notice You

When you ponder what moves the digital landscape and all its players, typically the following comes to mind: who’s spending what and where, how to invest in different buckets – from TV to digital, where your money is actually going, and budgets (namely, who is willing to spend the most).

But what lies behind the dollar signs? The answer: an entirely different currency that the industry is truly busy chasing, and one that in today’s economy is even more scarce than cash – the human attention span.

Scientific Seduction

In the words of TechCrunch, “the attention economy is bankrupting us.” And it’s definitely not helping an industry already reeling over widespread content fatigue and platform giants like Facebook deprioritizing posts. Thus, it’s time we rely on new approaches, as all efforts and spend become null and void if the target audience is not successfully engaged or converted.

 Neuromarketing research points to a solution, asserting that engagement-based content awakens the brain while enhancing content memorability. In fact, our data here at Playbuzz supports this hypothesis, showing that stories with interactive elements garner an average dwell time 21X higher than the average time spent on piece of digital content.

And commercial content is no exception – Nielsen recently studied Playbuzz-powered branded content and found that it garnered an average brand lift of 91%, compared to the global 8% norm.

Also Read: Engaging Millennials Beyond Financial Milestones

Win Back Attention

Grab hold of diminishing attention spans and win back readers and consumers alike with these three tips.

1. Redefine How You Measure Success

Clicks and views standalone are no longer suitable measurements of success, and frankly haven’t been for some time. However, the media industry’s tight grip on these KPIs has blinded it from what’s important: that the assessment of contents’ performance should be based on current content consumption habits. In an age where users want to click, swipe, tap, flip, vote and comment, we must reimagine our KPIs to revolve around active consumption rather than baseless (perhaps accidental?) views. This is the catalyst to finally closing the door on dull, static ad formats and pop-ups that worsen the consumption experience versus heightening it.

2. Understand the Anatomy of Great Content, & How to Create It

Many publishers don’t have the time or resources to develop solutions that enable them to create engagement-based content. Such content can help you poll readers on their opinions about a recent election, ask them their predictions on who will win a sports game, or package a serious topic that can raise awareness on a current event, in an approachable manner that will garner attention. Newsrooms can no longer rely on text and a few images or expect audiences to simply scroll. They must begin to look outside their walls to third-party tools that can elevate their content to bring audiences on a journey. Readers crave visual-first, interactive, data-driven content that is involving. Just ask them.

Also Read: How App Science Will Lead to Better Predictive AI 

3. Invest in CPE Campaigns

Campaigns that are labeled paid, sponsored or promoted can potentially turn readers off initially. Considering years of audiences being bombarded by dull, unrelated ad units, it’s no wonder. But this makes it that much harder for branded content to harness diminishing attention spans.

So how do we deliver branded content consumers actually want to engage with? The solution lies in the simple fact that editorial content isn’t the only content that should be interactive.

The likes of Netflix, Brita, and Sky Mobile are all investing in Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE) campaigns to forge deeper relationships with their audiences. Unsurprising considering these interactive forms of commercial content reduce media wastage, providing more viewability into the action a consumer takes after seeing the ad content. In fact, interactive content is proven to convert buyers 70% of the time, compared to passive content’s 36%. 

How the World Goes Round

Attention, in many ways, is what’s propelling the world forward. And tactics like click-bait are not coming with. As a publisher or brand, the time to disrupt is now. You can no longer solely rely on platforms to drive eyeballs and must instead push yourself to reimagine how content is packaged to ensure it’s immersive enough to break past the barrier of FOMO. Engagement is the future – even science thinks so.

Also Read: The New Marketing: Don’t Be Afraid to Catch Feels