This article was originally published on WARC.
The digital advertising landscape in Southeast Asia is a vibrant and dynamic arena, with brands vying for a slice of the region's ever-growing consumer base. Yet, amid this fervent competition, a curious paradox has emerged: the attention economy, a concept that champions the value of capturing and holding audience focus, is experiencing a surge in awareness but a lag in adoption.
While the allure of attention metrics is undeniable, Southeast Asian advertisers are hesitant to fully embrace them, leaving untapped potential on the table.
This hesitation carries a significant opportunity cost. Attention metrics are not merely vanity metrics, they are a strategic tool that can drive tangible business benefits. By understanding and optimising for attention, advertisers can achieve:
- Increased ad effectiveness: Ads that capture and hold attention are more likely to be remembered, resonate with consumers and drive desired actions.
- Improved ROI: Optimising campaigns based on attention data can lead to more efficient media spending, maximising the impact of every advertising dollar.
- Enhanced brand reputation: By associating their brands with high-quality, engaging ad experiences, advertisers can strengthen their reputation and foster consumer trust.
- Reduced carbon footprint: Attention-optimised campaigns can minimise wasteful ad impressions, contributing to a more sustainable advertising ecosystem.
The winds of change: Advertisers' growing interest
The benefits of attention and the efforts of the industry have not gone unseen from the demand side. Forward-thinking brands are beginning to recognise the value of attention and are actively exploring ways to incorporate it into their marketing strategies. Here are a few examples:
- Unilever, in collaboration with Playground xyz, has explored the impact of attention on ad effectiveness for their brands in Southeast Asia, finding that ads with higher attention levels led to significant increases in brand awareness and purchase intent.
- Diageo, the global beverage alcohol company, partnered with Adelaide to optimise its digital campaigns for maximum attention, revealing a strong correlation between attention and key brand metrics.
- Nestlé in Indonesia leveraged an attention-forward planning framework to deliver strong recall scores, as well as purchase intent.
These examples underscore not only a growing recognition among advertisers of the need to go beyond traditional metrics and prioritise attention-grabbing strategies but also provide compelling evidence that attention-based advertising works. However, despite these promising results, attention metrics have yet to become commonplace in the region, highlighting the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in fully integrating attention into the advertising landscape.
Why it matters
Attention metrics and measurement can make Southeast Asia’s advertising more effective and reduce the industry’s carbon footprint by minimising wasteful ad impressions. Not leveraging them may result in missed opportunities to optimise campaigns and connect with audiences on a deeper level.
Takeaways
- There is a major opportunity cost in not embracing attention, as Southeast Asian advertisers could see increased ad effectiveness, improved ROI and enhanced brand reputations by adopting it.
- A hurdle is the reluctance of walled gardens like Google and Meta to share data with third-party measurement providers but open measurement initiatives from IAB Tech Lab have made progress.
- The transition to an attention-based advertising ecosystem in SEA requires a mindset shift, with a need to highlight attention’s value proposition, dispel misconceptions and show its tangible benefits.
The measurement conundrum: Navigating complexity in a dynamic region
The pursuit of attention is a timeless quest in advertising. From the strategic placement of print ads to the impactful storytelling of television commercials, advertisers have always sought to command the gaze and captivate the minds of their audiences. In the pre-digital era, attention was a sought-after currency, earned through creative and strategic tactics like bold colours, evocative headlines and memorable jingles. While effective, these methods lacked the precision of modern measurement tools, relying on proxy metrics like reach, frequency and recall.
The advent of digital advertising brought with it the promise of quantifiable data. Metrics like clicks, impressions and conversions offered a glimpse into user behaviour. But as the digital landscape grew more complex, its limitations became apparent. New metrics like viewability and engagement rate emerged, bringing advertisers closer to measuring true attention. However, it was only with the advent of technologies like eye-tracking, biometric sensors and machine learning that attention could be truly quantified and analysed with greater accuracy.
Yet this newfound ability to measure attention has also revealed its inherent complexity. Attention is not a static metric; it's a dynamic human phenomenon influenced by myriad factors – individual preferences, emotional state, surrounding environment, device type, time of day and content context, to name a few. Research even suggests that attention spans can vary by up to 400%, depending on the individual and the situation.
In Southeast Asia, this complexity is amplified by several challenges:
Walled gardens' reluctance and the rise of local giants
While Google and Meta remain dominant players, accounting for over 70% of digital ad spending in Southeast Asia (internal data), the ascent of homegrown tech giants like Gojek, Grab and Shopee is reshaping the landscape. These platforms, with their closed ecosystems and focus on local user preferences, often operate with different data collection and measurement practices compared to global platforms. This creates an ecosystem that may be even more fragmented than others, where advertisers struggle to gain a comprehensive understanding of consumer attention across channels.
Human factor variability and shrinking attention spans
The inherent variability of human attention is further complicated by the decreasing attention spans observed in recent years. Research suggests that attention spans have dropped by 33% from 2000 to 2015 (Statistic Brain Research Institute), making it even more challenging to capture and hold audience focus. Southeast Asian markets have seen an exceptionally huge uptick in mobile and short-form video consumption, further increasing the battle for attention.
Localisation and language
Southeast Asia's rich cultural tapestry, woven with over 700 languages and numerous ethnic groups, shapes a diverse landscape of consumer behaviours and communication styles. This cultural and linguistic diversity profoundly impacts how audiences perceive and engage with advertising, which invariably influence their attentive patterns, cognitive patterns, as well as subtle nuances further challenging the notion of a one-size-fits-all attention economy measurement.
Panel limitations and demographic diversity
The diverse demographics of Southeast Asia pose challenges for traditional measurement panels, which may not adequately represent the full spectrum of the region's population. Over-reliance on urban, tech-savvy individuals can skew results and lead to an overestimation of attention levels. Advertisers need access to panels that accurately reflect the region's demographic diversity to obtain reliable insights. However, getting a representative sample implies a high cost of recruitment, as well as tech enablement, which might make the methodology too expensive for price-sensitive SEA advertisers.
These challenges underscore the unique complexities of the Southeast Asian advertising landscape. Addressing them requires a collaborative effort from industry stakeholders to develop localised, flexible and inclusive attention measurement solutions that accurately reflect the region's diverse demographics and cultural nuances.
A path forward: Collaboration, innovation and a unified vision
Despite the challenges, the potential of attention metrics in Southeast Asia remains immense. To fully harness this potential and propel the region to the forefront of the attention economy, a multi-pronged approach across three areas is crucial:
Data collaboration and integration: Bridging the gap between global and local
- Southeast Asia's digital advertising ecosystem is a unique blend of global giants like Google and Meta, alongside rapidly growing local platforms like Gojek, Grab and Shopee. Encouraging collaboration between these diverse players, including third-party measurement providers, is essential. This will foster a more unified view of attention data, allowing for accurate cross-platform comparisons and a deeper understanding of how audiences engage with ads across the entire media landscape.
- Moreover, the entire ecosystem stands to benefit from proactively coming together to advocate for attention-based metrics. By establishing a shared understanding of attention and its value, all players can contribute to a more transparent and effective advertising environment. This, in turn, can lead to increased trust from advertisers, improved campaign performance and ultimately, a healthier and more sustainable digital advertising industry. IAB’s "Attention Measurement Guidelines for Digital Video Advertising" is a step in the right direction but more comprehensive and localised standards are needed.
Contextual attention and localised benchmarks: Tailoring measurement to SEA
- In Southeast Asia, cultural and social context significantly impact ad perception. Attention isn't just about eyeballs, it's about understanding how an ad resonates within the viewer's world. A festive ad during Ramadan needs to be respectful, while deep-diving the daily routines of the consumers can help adjust the potential APM (attentive impressions per mille).
- Localised benchmarks are also key. A "high-performing" score in Singapore might not translate to success in Vietnam due to different media habits and preferences. Industry-specific benchmarks matter too. Attention spans for FMCG ads might be shorter than for luxury brands.
- Contextual attention measurement and localised benchmarks empower advertisers to understand not just if their ads are seen but how they resonate within the diverse cultural and economic Southeast Asian mosaic.
Hybrid measurement approaches: Capturing the full spectrum of attention
- Tackling the attention economy in Southeast Asia needs more than one way of measurement. Eye-tracking reveals visual focus but cultural context is crucial. Facial coding deciphers emotional responses, helping advertisers gauge if their message resonates or falls flat. Meanwhile, self-reported attention data sheds light on conscious perception and brand recall.
- This holistic approach allows advertisers to tailor campaigns that resonate emotionally and culturally. It's about understanding not just if an ad is seen but how it's perceived and felt, ensuring it doesn't just capture attention but fosters meaningful connections in the unique cultural landscape of Southeast Asia.
The opportunity cost of inaction
While the transition to attention-based measurement may seem daunting, the cost of inaction is far greater. By clinging to traditional metrics, Southeast Asian advertisers risk missing out on valuable opportunities to optimise their campaigns, connect with their audiences on a deeper level, minimise the environmental impact of digital advertising and ultimately drive greater business results.
The attention economy is not a passing trend – it's the future of advertising. By embracing attention metrics, advertisers can gain a competitive edge, unlock untapped potential and forge stronger connections with their audiences in the ever-evolving digital landscape of Southeast Asia.